Vacant (18 page)

“Fiske is scheduled to testify today against me.”

I stared straight ahead. “What?”

“Yeah. Garrett Fiske. The man who plays poker with the devil and who we know—but can't prove—is involved in half the nasty stuff in the city? Yeah, that guy. Apparently he and the mayor are friends and the mayor thinks he should tell everyone how violated he felt when you and I told him to back the hell off. Apparently it's fine to threaten my nephew and Lord knows what else, but the minute we—”

“Fiske?” I interrupted, still unable to believe it.

“Yeah.”

“Garrett Fiske? How in hell is he testifying in a police building?” I asked, everything else disappearing in the face of that one central stupidity.

“And you want to know the worst part?”

“What?”

“The fingerprint is half-smudged, like I tried to wipe it off the thing after I was done. It's a bang-up job. The lab's sure the timeline fits exactly—apparently the oil and sweat were the right age. They wouldn't go into details even when I bribed them. It looks pretty damning.” She huffed again.

“That's . . . that's. . . .” I didn't know what to say. How could they have found a fingerprint if she didn't leave one? I hadn't thought she'd touched the pole at all.

“Adam?”

“What?” I said.

“You were there, right? I didn't do more than rough him up a little, right? You're sure I didn't kill him?”

I closed my eyes. If she was doubting herself, it really was bad. “Yeah, I was there. He was alive when we left him. Alive with a few bruises and a headache. He was even awake.”

I paused then. Had I hurt the guy? Was this my fault? “It wasn't an aneurism or a heart attack or anything like that, was it?”

“You were there,” she said. “Half his face was caved in. Whoever killed him did it with their fists and that damn pole.”

“Oh,” I said. I remembered that now. It all felt so far away. It had been a long few days, a few days that had felt in some ways like months had gone by. I felt like reality was shifting underneath me as surely as it had shifted in Tommy's mind after the marble. “You didn't do anything wrong,” I said. “You certainly didn't kill the guy.” And I believed it. I did. But the whole thing made me very tired, and far more worried than I had been.

“I'm going to fight. I have to fight,” she said, but she sounded tired too.

“Of course you will. You sure you don't want me there?” I said.

“You've got work, and you need the money. Plus, I've got to keep it together and I'm not sure you being here will help with that. If you can't speak for me, I'm not sure anything else is going to help.” She paused as I tried to figure out whether she was lying. “Where are you anyway?”

“Savannah,” I said. I thought I'd told her that, but who knew? I wasn't happy right now. I was worried for her and offended, still, a little. And I missed her, her absence like a sore tooth.

“I need to get ready for work now,” she said, and added a good-bye in a tone of voice she knew I wouldn't argue with.

“Bye,” I said to the empty dial tone. She was running away again, and this far away, there was nothing I could do about it.

*   *   *

I sat at the kitchen table, another cup of simcoffee and a stale piece of bread with butter in hand. I stared at the scarred wood tabletop while the coffee went cold and the bread got even staler. I tried to not feel offended, and to make connections. It was beyond belief that Fiske would be involved here in Savannah and be testifying against Cherabino and it all be unconnected. But for the life of me I couldn't see a common thread. It still felt like it was all falling apart, or would. I could see the vision coming now, and I didn't know how to stop it. The same for Cherabino, whose job I was now afraid was really, truly in jeopardy.

The phone had rung earlier, and they'd picked it up in the main room. Tommy was stirring in the other room, doubtlessly woken up by that phone, and me trying to get the energy to go check on him. The surroundings seemed
clear in Mindspace; I'd checked while I drank the half a cup of simcoffee that I had. That didn't mean I wasn't still jumping at shadows, trying to get ahead of Sibley. It was only Friday. Or just Friday. We'd have the weekend after this, not have to go into the courthouse, maybe. Would that make things worse or better? I wished I knew.

Jarrod came into the kitchen then, saw the coffeepot, and grabbed a cup. He seemed . . . agitated. He also carried a crisp new file folder with some things in it.

“What is it?” I asked, pulled out of my own obsession only out of force of habit. In the other room, Tommy was getting more active and I'd have to deal with him soon.

Jarrod looked at me while stirring the coffee. “Maybe I can help,” I said. I needed to do something useful right now. A phone call to Swartz had only let me leave a message with his wife, not talk to him. Something useful and distracting would be great right now, pull me away from thinking about cigarettes or Satin or running away. “What's going on?”

“Maybe you can,” Jarrod said. He came to the table, bringing the coffee and the file folder. “At least ask some questions from a new angle. So you know the team's been investigating the attack?” he said.

I nodded. “Something about working with your federal contacts?”

“Yes. The staff attorney called us because of the death threats via US Mail. That's our jurisdiction. Guarding witnesses technically is not, but since there's a telepathy angle here and we work with nonaffiliated telepaths, we've been given authorization to extend our responsibility. In any case, we've been asking questions through our existing contacts and comparing lists.”

“Lists?” I asked.

“People with access to military resources, either in
surplus or off the air force base in town. People matching the loose description of the attackers you gave us. And, most recently, the list of people who've called the gun store in the last six months. If we get a hit on DNA from the scene there, even better.”

“I'm pretty sure Sibley killed the gun store owner,” I said.

He nodded. “You told me that.”

I looked at him more closely then, feeling the edge of his exhaustion under the agitation. There were circles under his eyes, deep ones. Likely he hadn't slept much more than I had. It made me like him a little better.

“What's the issue now?” I asked. “Other than the fact that there's a hit man out there who easily wants us all dead and seems to be threatening the judge directly?” I still hadn't told him about Sibley's mind-control machine, and after my conversation with Kara last night I thought that unless he'd listened in on that conversation, I probably shouldn't tell him. I didn't want to be the start of a Guild-normals war. But I also didn't want the team to get blindsided.

Jarrod laughed, a dark sound. “Other than serious danger and a ten-year-old? And the fact that the judge can't tell us anything useful? That should be enough. Even if we still can't connect Pappadakis or anyone in his company or staff to the killings yet. We've got locals tailing half a dozen people, trying to get ahead of the issue.”

“But it's not enough,” I said, my stomach sinking. “That's what you're saying. It's not enough.”

“No. There're six names on our final list, suspects I wanted to track down today and have a talk with. I had the local police put out an all-points on them. Standard procedure so that somebody with more manpower brings them in if we can manage it. I got some notes on their usual
habits from a detective who's dealt with them before at about two last night.” He stopped, and his mind felt . . . shaky then.

“You've been busy,” I said cautiously. “There're several of us who can get on the phone and help.”

Jarrod nodded slowly. “We need to go down to the FBI lab today sometime and figure out what evidence they collected at the attack scene and if it can tell us anything.”

“I don't mind going. Labs are educational,” I said. I'd bring Tommy with me. “A moving target is harder to catch, right?”

“Depends,” Jarrod said, and sighed. “Priorities have shifted, though. That last phone call? My APB came back. Four of the guys on the suspect list were found this morning.”

I leaned forward. “Found where?” He meant “found dead,” didn't he? That was what his mind was saying.

“Found in the marsh, by a conservationist working on a pollution-cleanse. Apparently the ties on one of their ankles came loose.”

“Dead,” I said.

He nodded. “Dead, with their throats cut in a thin line, in a pattern the detective who called me had never seen before. The conservationist goes to that section of the marsh twice a year at most. It's sheer luck he found them, much less that I got a response on my APB.”

“Throats cut in a thin line, like a strangulation device?”

“Yes.” He thought, as I did, that this was Sibley's work. “It's suspicious that the four most likely suspects for Tommy's attack all ended up dead.”

“Okay, I don't get it,” I said. “There's absolutely no reason for Fiske to want these people dead if they're working on behalf of his buddy Pappadakis.”

“Assuming they are, in fact, working together as we
think they are,” Jarrod said tiredly. “We keep hitting dead ends on this one. Honestly if that bodyguard hadn't gotten Tommy out of there that morning, I'm not sure we would have been able to find him so quickly. His father doesn't seem to have any involvement whatsoever. The letters are a dead end—”

“How hard is it to fake a fingerprint?” I asked him then.

He blinked at me. “It would take some knowledge and skill, but the materials are freely available. Why?”

“Would someone who knows what they're doing be able to make a partial with a smear?” I asked. “With oils that are the right age?”

“That's a whole other level of difficulty,” Jarrod said. “It's highly unlikely anybody would go to that much trouble, in my opinion. Usually a complete fingerprint in the right place will get you anything you want. And, as I'm sure you've learned, people leave their natural fingerprints everywhere. Again, why?”

“Unrelated case,” I said.

“I don't pay you to work other cases while you work for me,” Jarrod said.

“It was one phone call with a homicide detective I work with all the time,” I said. “It's not a big deal. She was just getting another perspective. It didn't affect this case at all.”

He looked at me, unconvinced.

I looked back.

“You take a lot of phone calls while you're here.”

I felt guilty, like I'd done something wrong. But I hadn't, I didn't think. “You wanted me to leave on three hours' notice, right? I'm here, but there's stuff I can't leave undone. I'm keeping it under control. I really am.”

“See that you do.”

I nodded, and then that thing that had been bothering
me about this conversation came back up. “I still don't get why Sibley would kill those guys, much less dump them somewhere where no one will find them. It's not like him, I don't think. As near as we can tell, Fiske pays his guys well. It's not good for his organization if he gets a reputation for killing contractors randomly.”

“You've worked on a case against Fiske directly?” Jarrod asked. Now I had his full attention.

“That homicide detective I was talking to? She was a member of the task force against him. I'm not surprised that you can't connect Pappadakis with any wrongdoing; if he's taking lessons from Fiske, he's going to be good. In several years, they've never been able to make evidence stick against Fiske. Witnesses end up dead. Judges are paid off to exclude evidence. But if you talk to the guys on the street, the ‘big boss' calls the shots. You do what he tells you, or you clear things through the organization, you're fine. You get paid. Everything is great. Fiske has a reputation for being ruthless in business, but he doesn't move without a reason. In his own way, to the guys he works with, he's one of the fairest organization leaders they've had in a long time. Not that he won't slit their throats in a heartbeat—or have his guys do it—if they cross him. It's why he's stayed in power so long, and why he's been able to expand his territory this far south in the last few years.”

Jarrod thought about that. “So he only kills people that go against him, which makes sense. Let's take it a step further, though. Why were these guys going against him? Why kill them specifically, if they're good little soldiers?”

“All of this assumes Sibley is still working for Fiske. For all we know, Pappadakis or some third party could have hired him to do this work.”

Jarrod shook his head. “Either way, I don't see the benefit of killing them unless it's to shut down our inves-
tigation. It's like someone is going through systematically and closing down every possible avenue we have of connecting A and B. It sounds to me like it's completely in line with what we know about this group anyway. Ruthless and self-serving.”

“I don't buy it being all the same people, though,” I said. “There have to be at least two—” I stopped midsentence, having just realized that Tommy was standing in the doorway with wide eyes. I'd known, on some level, that he was there. There weren't any threats anywhere in the area—both of those things I'd been monitoring steadily for hours. But I hadn't thought to keep him from overhearing things.

“Who is killing people now?” Tommy asked in a very small voice.

“No one is killing anyone,” Jarrod said, like denying everything would put the genie back in the bottle.

Tommy's expression closed like someone had slammed a door. He turned to go.

I sighed and went after him.

In the hallway, I said, “Hold up.”