The Love-Haight Case Files (8 page)

Funeral.

Thomas forced himself to look away from his bloody corpse.

Had God thrown him back?

Or had he not been ready to face the hereafter … whatever the “hereafter” was?

Had there been too much unfinished business in his life?

Was he
that
tied to this office?

He floated along the ceiling for a while, watching the hooded man pick up a treasured diving trophy and bring it down hard on the back of the dark fey’s head. Then the man left, backup hard drive under his arm, pockets full of whatever else he’d taken … money, probably, Thomas guessed, judging by the open and empty petty cash box.

The fey had struggled to rise, but slipped in the blood, fell and lay there until sirens keened in response to Thomas’s 9-1-1 call. The fey covered his ears, the noise clearly bothering him, and once more he worked to get up, finally succeeding and staggering toward the door—only to be met by a pair of patrolmen rushing in, guns drawn.

Thomas noted the look of disbelief on the fey’s face—not just at the police’s arrival, but at what he’d wrought.

“I—I—I killed that man,” the fey stated. His words were thick, like a patient coming out of the effects of anesthesia. “I thought he was going to help me. And I—I—I killed him.”

The rest was a blur of activity.

The police called for backup and more arrived, the medical examiner’s people came shortly thereafter.

The fey was read his rights, handcuffed, and shoved into the back of a cruiser.

Barricades were put up, officers dispatched to keep the growing crowd at bay.

A seasoned woman detective arrived. She started barking orders like a drill sergeant, the officers around her complying.

So many pictures were taken, and little numbered markers were set here and there like Thomas had seen the actors do on the various incarnations of the
CSI
television shows.

Curious and repulsed, he watched them gather his body, put it in a vinyl bag, and wheel it outside.

Thomas followed it, hovering above the sidewalk, watching it all with a morbid curiosity and wondering where Valentino Trinadad was. Could spirits see each other? Val had said he’d died from a drug overdose on this corner and had come back to haunt the spot. Thomas had come back.

Maybe it was the corner.

Maybe it held souls to it.

Thomas noted familiar faces in the crowd, restaurant wait staff, people who lived in the apartments above the bars and the deli across the street, the fruit vendor and his family, hookers who worked the neighborhood. Evelyn. He thought his heart should seize at seeing her arrive on the scene of his murder.

But his heart did nothing.

It didn’t beat.

He couldn’t feel the blood pounding, and he thought it should be thrumming out a serious beat against his temples.

He should feel something, shouldn’t he?

Evelyn … he’d tried to call to her, but words wouldn’t come.

He watched her collapse, policemen helping her up and leading her inside the office, turning her in Gretchen’s chair so she wouldn’t see the blood and all the little numbers on plastic stands, heard an officer ask her questions, heard the detective ask her more, ask her if anything had been taken.

My backup hard drive,
Thomas had tried to say.
Petty cash. Maybe more, files I think. I saw the man messing with my files. But I’m not sure.
Still, the words remained at bay.

But Val talked. Thomas had shared numerous conversations with the dead hippie. If Val could talk, why couldn’t Thomas?

He concentrated, picturing veins standing out in his neck from the effort.

Still nothing.

He watched Evelyn leave, going around the side of the building and up the stairs to her apartment. Then he watched the policemen finishing, taking still more pictures, picking up their little numbers, closing the door and stretching crime scene tape across the entrance, collecting the barricades.

Two officers remained out front for another hour.

Three officers searched through his apartment, not really disturbing anything.

Then they all left, and Evelyn went back downstairs.

O O O

“That it?” Dagger asked.

The ghost nodded. “That’s all I can remember.”

“No names? Not of the fey or the other man?”

Thomas shook his head.

“All right, I’m on it.” Dagger rose and dropped his empty Starbucks cup in the waste can. “Take care, Evey. I’ll meet up with you later.”

Chapter 1.11

Dagger pulled out a chocolate bar and handed it to the homeless woman who lived in the alley behind Brock’s law office. She sat cross-legged in the gravel outside a sagging refrigerator box that had been turned on its side and was decorated with graffiti and dried flowers all along the lower half. Plastic bags were duct taped across what served as the roof and halfway down the sides in an effort to keep rain from turning her home to pulp. Inside were carefully folded blankets, a threadbare pillow, and a paper bag filled with an assortment of things.

She looked Latino at first glance, but Dagger knew better. He saw past the layers of dirt that had tinted her skin and picked up the faintest edges of pink around her eyes. She was white, and strands of black and gray hair peeked out from under the dirty American flag scarf she’d wrapped around her head. Dagger had keen vision but couldn’t place her age. She looked sixty, but she could have been at least a decade or two younger. Homeless life was brutal.

He had a keen sense of smell, too, and her odor was difficult to take. She stank of going many months without a bath and of all the scents of the alley that had adhered to her like a second skin. There was a trace of cheap cologne too, like perhaps she’d found a discarded bottle in the trash and upended the last of it on her. Dagger concentrated to keep the bile from rising.

He watched her devour the chocolate bar, and he handed her a second, which she held reverently for a moment and then stretched behind her and placed inside the paper bag for later. There were a few other homeless hanging about this alley, but no other shanties. He would get to them next. He’d come with a satchel stocked with a good supply of candy, jerky, and packages of dried apricots and pineapple.

Dagger had picked her first because from the looks of her cardboard hovel, she’d been here for quite some time.

“Sadie,” she said. “Name’s Sadie.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Dagger,” he replied. “Dagger McKenzie.”

“Odd name that. You’re private, right?” Sadie gave him a suspicious look. “You don’t look like police.”

“Yeah, I’m private,” he said.

“Looking into that lawyer’s death, aren’t you? That young one what died last night?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t know nothing about it.” But her eyes said different.

Dagger reached into his satchel and pulled out a box of granola bars and tossed them to her. Homeless currency. It was his personal policy not to give the homeless any money; he didn’t want them purchasing drugs or booze to drown their desperation and feed their addictions.

“I didn’t see nothing that night.” She held the box and looked at it, turned it over as if reading the ingredients. Then she placed it next to the paper bag. “Except that old Buick that kept going around the block. Was gonna come through my alley, but it was a big car. Driver tried it and backed out.” She cackled. “Car was rusted to shit anyway, hitting a couple of trash bins in my alley wouldn’t have hurt it much.”

Dagger worked a kink out of his neck and fixed his eyes on Sadie’s.

“All right,” she admitted. “I saw a little bit more. I went between those buildings over there, getting aluminum. Built them things so tight together a fat man couldn’t get between them, but I ain’t never been fat. I goes in there ’cause people toss cans in when they walk by on the sidewalk. They think the gap is good for garbage. So I went in there, picking up cans last night. Had me a flashlight that worked.”

“Go on.”

“I saw the Buick pull up out on Haight and park in front of my crack. Didn’t park very well, neither, too far out. But I knew they’d be gone before a cop could write them a ticket. It had that look, you know, of being in a hurry.”

“Go on.”

“That rusted to shit Buick had the back window down when it circled the last time, and I saw a monster-thing inside. Looked a little bit like the devil, all black and red and with ears so pointed like that. First I thought it was some client of that attorney. I seen those types, not the devil types but other monster-things, go in that office. I don’t like them, OTs. Not a bit. But when that Buick kept going around the block, I knew it was for something no good.”

“How so?”

“It had that look about it, you know, both the car and the devil thing, a cruising for trouble look and an in a hurry look. On that last pass, I saw the guy what was driving. He’d leaned over the seat and was talking to the devil thing. And then after they’d parked out front of my aluminum crack, I saw him even better, just before he pulled up his hood and got out of the car. You live in this neighborhood, this city long enough, you can read people at a look, you know? He was Latin, and a ganger. Had tats on his neck, the prison kind, they don’t look as good as the ones you get professional. I could’ve smelled ’em they got any closer. They was right there in front of the building crack where I was looking with my flashlight. That attorney should’ve known better than to invite them in, a ganger and an OT. Someone pulls up a hood, that’s trouble. I heard that attorney invite them in. It’s his own damn fault he got killed.”

Dagger found himself sadly agreeing with her. A big city like this, you had to be on guard. San Francisco was an impossible distance from Mayberry.

“Describe this man, Sadie, as close as you can, the tattoos. The one with the hood.”

“For a twenty I will.”

“No money.”

“A ten then. It’ll cost you a ten.”

“No.” Dagger’s eyes narrowed and he tossed her a thick shrink-wrapped pack of jerky. He set his lips in a thin line, a practiced expression meant to unnerve his target. Sadie was tough, but after a few moments of stare-down, she shrugged and started talking again.

She provided a surprisingly detailed description, down to the lightning bolt scar on the man’s cheek, and a tattoo on his neck—though she couldn’t quite see the entire design. It was enough, the symbol of a dangerous man. And Dagger knew where to find the sort.

“Saw him good ’cause he was under a streetlight. Didn’t need to shine my flashlight on him. ’Sides, I’d turned it off. Didn’t want him to see me. He had that look, you know.”

“Did you tell the police about this?”

She crossed her arms and sucked in her lower lip, giving a shake of her head and glancing away. “Don’t mind cops, I don’t. But I don’t like them OTs. Them OTs eat us.”

Dagger raised an eyebrow.

“Us, people without paperwork, people who ain’t got an address. Who misses people without an address? Who looks out for us? And, besides, that devil thing, it gave me the creeps. Not going to tell the cops about that, I’m not. Besides, they only talked to Jerry, the cops.” She gave a nod to the homeless fellow closest nearby. “Jerry’ll talk to anybody. Talks a lot, but the words don’t mean much.”

Dagger waited, listening to bottle flies that buzzed against a trashcan on the opposite side of the alley. There was a swarm of them, and the afternoon sun cut down between buildings and heated the metal can and whatever food scraps had been tossed inside that were apparently beyond even the homeless people’s tastes. It was getting almost too cool for flies.

“I was still in the crack, picking aluminum … there was a lot of aluminum that night … when the hooded man came back out of the law office for his car. Tossed something in the crack. I was afraid he’d seen me there, but he was in too much of a hurry to notice. And after he drove away I looked for what he’d tossed. Turned my flashlight back on.”

“What was it, Sadie? What did he throw in?”

She waited, clearly wanting another bribe, but Dagger shook his head.

“Didn’t want it, what he’d tossed,” she said. “The hooded fellow was a druggie and had shot up. It was a hypo. I don’t do drugs.”

Those kinds of drugs anyway
, Dagger thought.

“Don’t want AIDS or anything like that. No resale value on hypos that I know of.”

“Anything else happen? Did you see anything else?”

“Yeah. The cops came and the ambulance. Lights all over, lots of noise. Me and Jerry went out to get a better look. Had to go around ’cause Jerry is fat and won’t fit through the crack. Had to go around and up the sidewalk. That’s when we found out the devil thing had killed the lawyer. The cops were pulling the devil thing out of the lawyer’s place.”

Dagger squatted, eye-level with the homeless woman. “What about before that, Sadie?”

“Already told you. Isn’t nothing else to tell. Done told you more than you needed to know. Don’t need to keep jawing with you.”

“Before last night, Sadie. What did you see before last night?”

She drew her lips together, like she’d just bitten into a lemon, and she leaned forward. The bile rose higher and Dagger felt it on his tongue; she had that serious of a stink about her.

“What did you see the night before that, Sadie?”

“The Buick the night before, and the night before that, too. But not any nights previous. Just the two nights before the devil thing killed the lawyer.” She paused, eyes brightening. “That’s because the ones in the Buick, they were casing the place, right? They were planning to kill the young lawyer, weren’t they? Just looking for the best time.”

Dagger nodded. “Tell me some more about the Buick, Sadie.” He added one more candy bar to his bribe, and then, when he moved on, repeated the exercise with the other homeless people in the alley behind Thomas Brock’s law office. But none of them were as helpful as Sadie.

Dagger had not intended to spend his afternoon in this alley. In fact, he’d not planned on getting up before noon … rough night with the moon so full. He’d tried to ignore the phone buzzing this morning, but he saw the Caller ID: Evelyn Love. He’d done some work for Saul Goldstein’s office and had met Evelyn there, liking her enough to add to her education—with skills they didn’t teach in law school. So Dagger had picked up the phone, his voice thick with sleep and the aftereffects of his rough night, and listened to Evey’s tale, agreeing at the end of it to investigate Thomas’s murder.