The Love-Haight Case Files (5 page)

“Thomas!” Evelyn cried, forcing her way to the front and up against the barrier. She tried to dip under the barricade, but an officer stopped her.

“You have to stay back, ma’am.”

“I work there,” she said, pointing at the office. She spotted a red-and black-skinned fey in the backseat of the closest police car. It had on a pale muscle shirt that was spattered with blood.

The front door of the office was propped open. A man and a woman wearing dark jackets, MEDICAL EXAMINER in yellow on the backs, wheeled out a gurney, a body on it in a vinyl bag.

“I work there.” Again she tried to drop below the barricade.

Then she knew why the police and the ME were there.

Dear God, somehow she knew.

There are crystal clear moments when worst fears become real, when ill thoughts hang ugly and suspended like carcasses of meat on hooks in the slaughterhouse. She knew it was Thomas on the gurney, and the realization hit her like a sledgehammer to the gut.

Her knees threatened to give out.

“I work there.” It came out as a whisper.

“If you work there, ma’am, then we’ll probably need to speak to you,” the officer said. He’d been saying something else, but it was lost in the lights and the shushing sound of traffic from the side streets and in the conversations of the crowd.

“Ma’am?” The officer was in her face, looking concerned. “Ma’am?”

Her legs were jelly and they wouldn’t hold her up. She gripped the barricade. “Thomas? Where’s Thomas Brock?” She knew … that he was on the gurney … but she asked the question anyway, some little piece of her mind railing against fate and holding onto hope.

“Ma’am—” the officer gently gripped her shoulders. “Thomas Brock is dead.”

The darkness reached out and suffocated Evelyn.

Chapter 1.7

“It’s those … things, ya know. It’s those things that go in and out of his office, those things he called clients.”

“Monsters come and go every once in a while. I see ’em. I live right across the street, above the deli, and I watches ’em when I ain’t working. I watches ’em, I say. I see a dead man go in and out of there quite a bit earlier this week.”

Dead man … Evelyn knew the gossiper was talking about Mr. Holder. She was woozy, being helped up by a policeman. Somehow she’d gotten on the other side of the barricade. He was walking her toward the office.

“Maybe that dead man did it, wanting to have a dead attorney.”

She heard someone laugh at that comment.

“You sure that’s Brock in the body bag? He had a geezer for a secretary. Sure it ain’t her in the bag?”

“Nah, heard the cops say it was Brock. Heard that it was murder, that they got the thing that did it, too. See that thing in the car? Looks like the devil itself.”

“I see monsters come and go out of there once in a while.”

Evelyn tried to turn her head to get another look into the back of the police car, but all she saw was the policeman’s armpit. She had seen a fey, though, a red and black one, no more details visible because of the way the car was parked.

Dead. Thomas was dead. She felt her legs start to give way again.

“Joe, get the paramedic over—”

“No. I don’t need one. Don’t want one,” Evelyn said. She’d refuse a ride to the hospital too if they offered. “I just need to sit down. Just let me sit down.”

It was a dizzying whirl of colors … the lights from the police cars, the neon from the two bars across the street, the spotlights—streetlights—that shown down on the lookiloos in their garish clothes. All of it seeming to be a psychedelic paisley that spun to the music of police radios crackling, the incessant buzz of the craning necked gawkers, and to the Mamas and Papas who were singing “California Dreamin’” out of someone’s open window.

Brown leaves, gray sky, the Mamas and Papas harmonized.

Evelyn wished this was all some horrid California dream.

All the lights were on in the office, and they sat her at Gretchen’s desk, turning the chair so it faced the front window and the still flashing police lights. They hadn’t turned her fast enough, though. She’d seen into the very back by the conference table.

There was a lot of blood on the floor, some on the back wall, files, papers, and pink message slips were scattered about, and a desk lamp was knocked over. Classic signs of a struggle. Technicians were fingerprinting the place; instinctively she kept her hands off Gretchen’s desk. Evelyn was good at noticing details, and she’d seen too many; her stomach churned. The police had brought her in here because they were going to ask her to “take a look around.” Otherwise they would have kept her outside, maybe in one of the squads. All that blood, that wasn’t an accident.

Murder
, she remembered one of the lookiloos saying. No question it was murder.

“Thomas was murdered.” Evelyn doubled over and worked to keep the turkey wrap and grapes down.

“Ma’am.” The policeman set his hand against her back. Back? Where was her backpack? Her class notes and iPad and—There it was, sitting on the floor next to her. She hadn’t remembered taking it off, guessed that one of the cops had done that for her, maybe when she’d collapsed at the front of the crowd and he’d carried it here for her. “Ma’am—”

“Evelyn Love. My name is Evelyn. Please don’t call me ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’ … Evelyn.” He sat a small bottle of water in front of her. She was quick to open it and take a long swallow.

“I work here,” she said. Hadn’t she already told him that? Told one of them anyway. “I’m Thomas Brock’s legal assistant.”
Was.
She gestured behind her without turning around. “The desk in the middle. That one’s mine.”
Was mine.
She’d remembered that the blood hadn’t quite reached that far, not to her desk or Thomas’s; it was a long, narrow building.

The cop pulled over a chair, the rollers clattering against the old wood, brought it all the way around so he was in front of Gretchen’s desk. He tapped on the desk to get her attention. He was wearing white latex gloves. Had he just put them on? No. He’d had them on when she first saw him.

It was her chair he was in, and she almost asked him to switch; she had it at just the right height. Gretchen’s was too low. She saw him adjust the chair higher to better fit his long legs. She decided that bothered her; he’d had no right to do that. “Has anyone called Gretchen?”

“Who?”

“Gretchen Cain, our secretary. This is her desk.”

“No, ma’am, not that I know of. Evelyn. But we’ll get to it.”

“I should call her.”

“Not yet.” He nudged the water bottle and she drank a little more.

“When did this happen? Who called it in? Why—” It hadn’t been that long ago, the police still swarming, the crowd so interested. And yet it had been at least a little while, since they were already moving Thomas’s body. They’d been here long enough to take pictures, call the coroner. How long could that take? They could have done all that in less than an hour, she guessed. Sirens had serenaded the bus to its stop; the police had still been arriving. “How long ago—”

He shook his head.

Were they using anything supernatural in their investigation? A witch or a seer to mentally reconstruct the murder? It didn’t look like it, looked like only plain-old cops were here. Maybe they didn’t need anything supernatural if they already had the suspect in custody. Maybe it was too cut and dried. Evelyn knew most police in the city didn’t like relying on any supernatural elements anyway, prejudice coupled with a dogged determination to rely on human skills.

“What about his father? Thomas’s father. Reginald Brock of Brock, Davis & Davis. He’s—”

“Someone is going to Mr. Brock’s house now to notify him.”

Evelyn knew Thomas hadn’t seen his father for many months. The two didn’t get along, though once upon a time Thomas had admired his father enough to follow in his legal footsteps. Something caused a split, however, and Thomas had talked only a little about it, saying his father delighted in trying cases against OTs and that he disapproved of Thomas’s practice, which favored them.

“What happened here?” Evelyn tried again, not bothering to hide the desperation in of her voice. She had a hundred more questions, all lining up in her befuddled brain. She shivered; it was cold in here. Val … Valentino was around, probably not willing to show himself. Val hated cops. But the chill told her he was probably hanging in the wall, watching. Maybe Val had seen what happened. “Tell me what happened.” After another swallow of water, she added. “Please.”

He redirected her just like cops did in the books and movies—the good procedurals in any event—turning the questions to her, carefully, and taking out a notebook. He wasn’t a detective, but he was far from a rookie. She’d spotted a detective in the back, a prim-looking all-business woman in plainclothes.

Evelyn obligingly went through everything, knowing full well she’d go through it again, tomorrow morning probably, maybe down at the precinct. Where had she been, when had she last seen Thomas, was he alone, what were his plans, etc., etc., etc. Did he have any enemies that she knew of? Had she heard anyone make threats? The policeman gave her next to nothing in return.

“You have—” She’d watched the police car with the fey in the backseat leave a few minutes ago. “There was a fey in the car, a dark fey. Was he the one? Did he—”

Can’t discuss it, ma’am … Evelyn.

Ongoing investigation.

We’ll know more later.

Not at liberty to say.

Sheesh, they really did recite that last line
, Evelyn thought.
It wasn’t just a piece of TV dialog.

“I live upstairs, will I be able to—”

“You lived with Mr. Brock?”

She shook her head.

“No, officer, I live on the
second
floor. Thomas has …
had
 … an apartment on the
third
floor.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a problem with you going to your apartment later. But I’ll check.”

Evelyn knew there wouldn’t be a problem, she knew the law. They couldn’t keep her out of there, the rent paid up. The crime had been committed here, and her apartment was not accessible from inside this office. But she would let one of the officers walk through her apartment; it would make her feel better.

No, nothing could make her feel better,
she corrected.
Thomas Brock is dead. What the hell am I going to do?

Chapter 1.8

It was nearly midnight before they’d finished talking to her. The woman, Detective Angela Reese, asked many of the same questions that the first officer had and saying in the middle of it: “sorry for your loss.” They’d told her she didn’t have to go to the station tomorrow after all. She’d given them enough.

She wouldn’t be going to Massawa for honey wine either.

Evelyn had gotten another look at the office—an unfortunate long look at the detective’s request. She spotted Val poking his head out of a filing cabinet. The office had only two filing cabinets … not enough casework to justify more. And thankfully those were against the wall near her desk, away from the blood.

She wanted to talk to the spirit, but knew that wouldn’t happen with the cops around. Val had been picked up a few times when he was breathing, spent more than a few nights in jail, and in death he had retained his passionate loathing for law enforcement.

“See anything missing, Ms. Love?” the detective had asked.

Thomas’s computer was there, but the back had been pried off it, the electronic guts ruined, his desk drawers gone through, an impressive-looking diving trophy he’d kept on a shelf broken. The lid of the office’s cashbox was under Thomas’s chair, the empty box a few feet away. And well beyond that dimes and nickels were scattered in the blood.

The detective saw her looking at the lid. “Do you know how much money was in the cash box? How much money Thomas Brock carried in his wallet? We didn’t find any money on the fey.”

Evelyn shook her head. “A couple hundred maybe in the box. No more than that.” A pause: “And Thomas never carried a lot on him. Not enough to be killed for.”

“Anything else missing? Obviously missing?”

So maybe they were thinking robbery as a motive.

“A glass snow globe that was—” No, it wasn’t missing, and it hadn’t been valuable. It was broken, the glitter at the edge of the blood, one of Thomas’s memories shattered. “That.” Evelyn pointed at the damaged computer, but that was evident. “Pieces of that are missing, the boards from inside it at least. And I don’t see his backup hard drive either, and that was always on his desk because it wouldn’t fit in the skinny desk drawers. For anything else, I’d have to go through stuff,” she’d told them. “Really look. The drawers, the papers, the file cabinets, and it’ll take time. Then I’ll know if something else is missing.” Her own desk appeared untouched; her chair had been returned behind it, seat still adjusted too high.

“Tomorrow,” the detective had said. “Around noon. I’ll come back and we’ll go through it together. Then when I clear it after that you can have a crew come in for cleaning. I can recommend—”

Evelyn had numbly nodded. “I know a cleaner. I’ll call them.” She’d tried to ask about the dark fey again, thinking the detective might give her something, but she got another “not at liberty to say.”

Damn, they really did recite that line.

Chapter 1.9

She watched the numbers flip on the clock by her bed, the “1” coming down, the minutes starting to turn over. Police walked through Thomas’s apartment overhead. Three by the sound of it, then two, one tromping down the stairs.

Evelyn had thought about asking to be present during their search of Thomas’s place. The request would have been approved; she could have spewed legalese if necessary. But she didn’t want to see his things. She’d never been up to his apartment, though he’d invited her for dinner a few times, admitting that he was a bad cook but was willing to give it a try … or was willing to bring in Chinese take-out. On the other hand, Evelyn was by necessity a good cook, and figured he was hinting that she should instead ask him over. That hadn’t happened and they’d always gone out.

Tears came.