Wicked City (23 page)

“Christ, Zeph, what's that on your head?”

Whoops. I'd forgotten it would be visible without my hat. “War casualty,” I said. “After the man knocked you out.”

“And I thought
I
had a bump! Did he use a billy club?”

I squirmed. Harry was right—I was becoming as helpless as a civilian. “Oh, you know,” I said, “it was dark. More importantly, what do you remember? You got stopped at a nail-biter.”

Lily sighed theatrically. “She's not saying.”

Aileen bit her lip and shook her head. “Lily doesn't understand. It's not that I don't want to tell, it's that I'm not
sure
. I wasn't parroting what Zuckerman said to me, I'd allowed him to, well, inhabit my body. It's not very pleasant!”

I shuddered. “Doesn't sound like it.”

“I could hear him a little,” she said, her eyes staring into a place I couldn't follow, “but it was muffled. Distant. I had to focus so much just to hold myself together, to make sure that I could push him out when the time came. Then I felt something like an earthquake and Zuckerman spoke to me. To
me,
I mean, not to the audience.”

“And what did he say?” Lily had pulled out her notebook. This struck me as crass, though I understood the impulse.

Aileen frowned at her, her eyes returning to sharp focus. “Not for the paper, Lily.”

“After last night, you're a news item whether you like it or not.”

“Not about this,” Aileen said, drawing herself up with a dignity that surprised me. “And if you think so, you're free to leave.”

Lily pouted. “You'd kick me out?
She
was the one who left you unconscious. I stayed with you all night!”

“And I'm grateful for it, but this
isn't news
. Or at least, I won't be the one to make it so. Besides, I don't see you with a bruise the size of a goose egg on your temple.”

I beamed at her. “You are my dearest friend, you know that?”

“You aren't going to like this, Zephyr,” she said.

I sighed. “I haven't liked much since Zuckerman and McConnell caught us on the roof. But in current circumstances, forewarned is forearmed,” I said, echoing Mrs. Brandon's dictum from last night.

With a distressed sigh, Lily put her reporter's notebook and pen down carefully on the coffee table. “Off the record,” she said, and then looked at me sharply. “Current circumstances?” she repeated. “Has something else happened?”

“Oh, just that the murdering spree had an anonymous mastermind, and apparently top brass is betting on me. Someone wrote Madison's man very particular letters, and that someone seems to have an uncanny knowledge of private details of my life.”

“You're being framed?” Lily said, inching toward the notebook as though she were hardly aware of it.

Aileen smacked her hand away. “No quotes,” she said, biting off each word.

“About Zuckerman, not Zephyr's latest headline!”

“You will see,” Aileen said, “that the one seems to be the other.”

My scalp tingled and my head gave a single, bell-like throb. “What did he say?” I asked.

Aileen cleared her throat. “He said…” She closed her eyes. “He said that he remembered me from the roof. He said that I should watch out for you, Zephyr, and I said yes, she's in danger and he said no, watch yourself around her. ‘She's been cursed,' he said. ‘I'm almost positive of it.'”

I hadn't expected that. I didn't know much about curses—or any spell working at all, since I was incapable of performing them. “Who would have cursed me? What kind of curse?”

“He didn't say. Maybe he didn't know? He said ‘Tell McConnell to look up the Nussbaum murder file from oh-three. There's blood in the Faust and it isn't normal.'”

“He was right,” I said. “The blood in the Faust was tainted. The police found the bag and the man confessed to as much.”

Lily clapped her hands. “Well then,” she said, “that seems the place to start. Someone has acquired deeply tainted blood. We find out how and perhaps we can exonerate Zephyr and
I
can have my headline.”

“I'm so grateful you'd deign to not destroy my life for newspaper inches, Lily.”

“And I'm grateful you'll let me save your reputation and future liberty by helping you solve this crime, Zephyr.”

“Good!” Aileen said, cutting through the tension with well-timed obliviousness. “This Nussbaum case is clearly the place to start—”

The doorbell rang. Aileen cut herself off.

“I will get it,” called Mrs. Brodsky, and then, “You! What do you want with her now? No, you cannot come in today. Later, when she feels better.”

We all looked at each other. “I don't think I want to meet whoever is at that door,” Aileen said.

“I'm sorry for the intrusion, ma'am,” said a male voice I recognized.

“You don't,” I said, sinking so low I nearly fell off the ottoman. “But McConnell won't care.”

*   *   *

“So,” McConnell said, alone on the large couch beneath the window, “what do you remember?”

Lily had wanted to stay, but he recognized her as a reporter and sent her off with the same frightening intensity that had gained him entry to the parlor. Lily made some cryptic references to research before she left, and I hoped she would uncover something useful about whatever this Nussbaum case had been. In the meantime, Zuckerman's partner was eyeing me and my roommate like he wished to impale us on tiny pins for a museum exhibit. It would have been disconcerting even if we hadn't had so much to hide.

“Nothing,” Aileen said, wisely.

McConnell nodded. “I understand it must be difficult for you. But it's of utmost importance to our investigation that you tell me what you know.”

“I know I found your partner. He was in a strange place … I'm not sure, I've never encountered a vampire spirit before. I asked him if he would speak to the living one last time and he didn't seem too bothered by it.”

“And then?”

“And then I let him enter my body. I don't remember a thing he said, officer. When possession occurs, I enter a different state. The next thing I knew, I was lying in my bed with a hot water bottle on my feet and a doctor poking me.”

I was duly impressed. Aileen took a sip of cold tea while Officer McConnell stared at his hands. I felt momentarily guilty that Aileen was refusing to give a departing soul his final wish in order to protect me. I was sure that Zuckerman wouldn't approve of her collusion, but Zuckerman hadn't liked me very much, and whatever he had uncovered, he was sure to see it in the least flattering light. McConnell would learn the truth just as soon as I did—and in the meantime, he couldn't put me in jail for something I didn't do. Or something I did do, for that matter.

“Would it be possible to try again, miss?” McConnell asked. “I could compensate you for your efforts.”

Aileen's fingers turned white around the teacup. “I'm not sure I could … vampires are strange souls. I've never seen one before your partner and it was … I mean, I don't believe—”

“
Please
, Lady Cassandra,” McConnell said, leaning forward.

“Leave her be!” I snapped. “Can't you see she's shaken up from her ordeal? You'd put her through that again?”

McConnell rounded on me. “If it will help catch a murderer,” he said.

“You've already caught one!”

“The real murderer, Miss Hollis,” he said, his voice—and his anger—quieter now, and all the more frightening for it. “As I believe you well know.”

I opened my mouth and closed it.
Tread carefully, Zephyr.
If I admitted knowledge of the letters, McConnell might very well arrest me on Mrs. Brodsky's ottoman.

“Real murderer?” I said, as innocently as I could manage. “Do you mean that informant Zuckerman mentioned during the séance?”

Aileen looked startled and I recalled that though she'd been inhabited by the ghost, she knew nothing of what he had said.

“No, no.” McConnell gave a tiny, frustrated shake of his head. “The informant Mort referred to was Brad, the man who assaulted you.”

“You had an informant in Madison's office? Your
own
spy killed…” I fumbled to a stop, realizing it was perhaps impolitic to state it so baldly.

McConnell looked away, his grief suddenly quite clear.

“So what do you mean
real
murderer?” Aileen asked. “It sounds to me like you've caught him.”

McConnell shifted uncomfortably, but he answered readily enough. “It appears Madison's man had an accomplice.”

“An accomplice?” I said, with what I hoped was adequate surprise. “In that case, I hope you'll start with Madison himself.”

McConnell tilted his head, examining me. “We don't think it's Madison,” he said.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone too dry. “Didn't Zuckerman say something about a Blood Bank?” I said, flailing but unable to stop. “Aren't there plenty of leads to investigate? You can't imagine that I … I mean…”

“Miss Hollis,” McConnell said, leaning forward. He regarded me so intently I half-expected him to pull a quizzing glass from his suit pocket. “Whyever would you imagine we suspect you?”

Normally, fear helped me focus. My reactions grew swifter, my aim inerrant. But now I felt as helpless as a trapped mouse. It was all I could do not to panic, but my flush must have looked damning.

“I don't know why you would,” I said.

“You can rest assured, Miss Hollis, we will be investigating
every
possible lead.” McConnell smiled pleasantly and stood. “Good day, Lady Cassandra, Miss Hollis. I'm sure you'll be hearing more from me.”

“Delighted to hear it,” I said, in tones considerably less so.

“Oh, one more thing,” McConnell said, pausing on his way to the door. “It seems this accomplice was the one who told Brad to kill a vampire officer. The letter—there were letters, you see—used some odd language. Something about ‘furthering the cause'?”

Oh, Christ. Mrs. Brandon hadn't told Amir
that
. McConnell let himself out.

 

CHAPTER NINE

I should have been plotting ways to prove my innocence, but instead I wandered around the city in a daze. My disastrous interview with McConnell ran through my head like a toy train on a looped track. I was in bigger trouble than ever, and I had no idea how to save myself. I had less than a day to go until the mayor's dinner on Saturday—if Nicholas didn't contact him by then, who knew what McConnell would do to me. But perhaps Nicholas already had. If I was lucky, Jimmy Walker had already called Commissioner Warren and told him to halt the investigation regarding Judah. That would be one less worry, but I had a nagging feeling of uncertainty. What if Nicholas told the mayor about the original supplier and Walker demanded an introduction? Impossible, I reassured myself. Since Nicholas didn't know about my continuing relationship with Amir, he couldn't betray me. And Mrs. Brandon thought Amir was an Arabian prince, not a djinni.

On the other hand, while a phone call from the mayor might convince the police commissioner to drop the investigation into Judah, I doubted even a call from the Vatican would stop McConnell and the other vice squad officers from investigating the murders. I was incalculably grateful to Mrs. Brandon for taking the trouble to forewarn me about the letters, and touched by her faith in my innocence. The letters were damning. I hadn't sent them, but someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to make it seem like I had. Who would do such a thing?

Eventually, old habits reasserted themselves and I recalled my obligations for the day. First among them, I needed to tell Elspeth about the developments in the murder investigation. Perhaps she would have some idea of who might want to frame me.

She wasn't in the office, but a note on the door said she'd return in ten minutes. I had waited half that long when I heard her climbing the steps. “Zephyr!” she said. “I hoped I'd see you! How is your head?” She unlocked the door.

“Better,” I said, though just her question reminded me of the throb at my temple.

I followed her inside, unsure of where to begin.

Elspeth sat behind her desk. “That's quite a bruise,” she said. “I'm impressed you came at all.” She paused. “I trust you know more than the papers?”

I hesitated, but I couldn't in good conscience not tell her. “They think the man had an accomplice,” I said. “There's some implication that the person might be someone politically motivated to oppose Faust.”

“How?”

I explained about the letters, but didn't name Mrs. Brandon specifically as my source. “But I didn't—”

Elspeth sliced her hand through the air, emphatically cutting me off. “How absurd. You're the last person I'd believe capable of such a thing. No, someone is trying to frame you—or all of us. Someone, I imagine, who wouldn't himself mind if Faust went down along with his enemies.”

“Madison?”

She gave a tiny shrug. “It seems plausible. But without knowing his method, his guilt is hard to prove. They're saying that he used some sort of tainted blood. The Faust itself has been ruled out.” She looked oddly disappointed.

“Would it be better if it had been the Faust?”

“No, you're right, of course. It's a horrible thought. Much better for all of us that this man is behind bars. It's just—well, you must see, Zephyr, how much easier our task would have been if Faust itself had proved to be deadly after long exposure.”

“But when Iris suggested we say so—”

“Iris suggested we say so as propaganda! She wasn't interested in the truth of the matter, only the uses to which we could put a plausible fiction.”