Flame in the Dark Read online

  • • •

  The next hour ticked by slowly, sharing the space behind the planter with Occam while the SWAT officers in tactical gear and the uniformed officers cleared every single building up and down the street. It was almost pleasant, even though the brick was cold and I was freezing. And I was thirsty. And I had to go to the bathroom. And Occam was lying so close. Not that he did anything untoward or unpleasant, but . . . I had never been so close to a man for so long. Not even when I was married. Marital relations between John and me had been fast and mostly unpleasant and most nights I had then slept elsewhere.

  “I wish we had coffee,” he muttered after an unconscionable amount of time.

  “And some of that cold pizza on the ‘All’ shelf of the refrigerator in the break room,” I fantasized.

  “Who brought Elidios’ pizza in? It’s all the way out on Callahan and Central Avenue Pike.”

  “I’d guess Rick. He doesn’t sleep much,” I added, “except on the new moon.”

  Occam swiveled his head to watch me in the darkness. “And you know that how, Nell, sugar?”

  I shrugged. It was part of the claiming/healing. I just knew things about Rick sometimes, and when there was no moon, he slept hard and deep.

  Occam let it slide. “You never ate at Elidios’ Pizza?” When I shook my head no, he said, “The unit should go there for supper one night.”

  I made a noncommittal sound and Occam turned his attention back to the streets and the wait that was both boring and too full of turmoil. When the city police had determined that the immediate area was safe enough to move, I crawled to my feet, left Occam lying there, and entered the closest restaurant, begging the use of the bathroom and something to eat. Anything they had left over. The restaurant manager, two cooks, and three waitpersons had been hiding in the kitchen, and they opened the place up just for the emergency responders, offering sandwiches and reheated soup, food that they claimed would be thrown out anyway. It was pretty good eatin’, according to the officers who came in for something warm. But to a girl raised in the church, where women knew how to cook, the bread was slightly stale and the soup needed bay, thyme, and black pepper. I didn’t say that, though. I knew about gift horses and minding my manners and I was hungry enough to eat that gift horse.

  Once I had used the facilities and stuffed soup and a sandwich in my mouth, and Occam had eaten three hoagies with double meat, we went our separate ways, Occam to take Rick some food and work with him on perimeter and rooftop examination, as well as the pattern of physical evidence. Crime scene techs showed up and began the collating and collection process. I traced up and down the street with the psy-meter 2.0, catching small spikes on level four again. So the readings hadn’t been erroneous. Our shooter creature, whatever he was, had a definite pattern. It suddenly hit me. I read a low-level four. But . . . I didn’t spike. So this thing wasn’t a whatever-I-was. Relief, and maybe a little regret, moved through me like a slow tide.

  I sent my new info to JoJo at headquarters and then crossed the street and entered the relatively warm room the city police had commandeered for questioning witnesses, where two FBI agents, T. Laine, and Tandy interviewed the bystanders and the people who had been in the restaurant. I watched through the door until the questioning was over and the last haggard couple left the room for the cold of night, followed by the PsyLED agents. They stopped when they saw me.

  T. Laine said, “No one saw anything except the chaos that erupted when the shooting started. Questioning so far has been an exercise in futility.” T. Laine had perfect teeth, and had lots of schooling—most notably she had some training in large-animal veterinary medicine, which came in handy with Unit Eighteen’s werecats.

  I looked at Tandy for his assessment. He looked pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. His reddish hair was mussed up as if he’d been running his hands through it.

  “No nudges on his truth-o-meter,” T. Laine said, “but he’s tired, and we have the bigwigs to talk to next.”

  “Too much fear in such a small place,” he said. “Panic has a smell and a taste, and—” His words cut off as he swallowed.

  “Go take a break,” T. Laine said. “Get hydrated. Nell can help me with this one.”

  A tingle of excitement raced through me, but I squished it down. “There’s water, coffee, and food across the street. The manager stayed on after he officially closed up, just for law enforcement.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Tandy walked away.

  “Bigwigs?” I asked.

  “The Tollivers. The senator and Justin, the rich brother, and their wives.” She sent me a knowing look, her dark eyes amused. “Excited, probie?”

  “As a dog with his tail stuck in an electric fence.”

  T. Laine shook her head and said to me, “Come on. Grab a water. No telling how this will go. We’ll have Secret Service and feebs and God knows who else in there with us.”

  The room was short on space, short on heat, and short on amenities. It had a five-foot-long folding table with a lamp on it and a few chairs: two for the couple, one for the questioner, and three against the wall, out of the way, so the interviewed would see only the primary interrogator. The rest of us were supposed to stand. The air inside was stale, laced with the stink of the fire and scorched coffee.

  There was also a plastic-wrapped case of water and a stack of legal pads, as well as the recording equipment, which consisted of a futuristic mic—a four-inch, freestanding handle topped with a metal circle and a wire through it, hardwired to a box about the size of a pack of playing cards. T. Laine had her cell out to record. So did the others. I didn’t bother.

  An African-American woman in a trench coat, pants, and low heels walked into the room and I had no doubt this was the Secret Service special agent in charge of the crime scene. Behind her, and similarly dressed, strode another woman, one I recognized from the Holloways’ house investigation. Stevens? Stoltz?

  They both placed tablets and pads for notes on the table and looked around at us, taking everyone in. The second woman’s eyes didn’t so much meet mine as bore a hole into my brain. I had made a reputation for myself when I took down the Knoxville FBI chief as a paranormal serial killer, and some feds didn’t like me much. The first woman spoke. “For those who haven’t met us, I am Special Agent Elizabeth Crowley, Secret Service. This is Special Agent E. M. Schultz, FBI. I will be leading this discussion. Not interrogation. Discussion. The Tollivers are neither persons of interest, nor are they suspects. They are an elected government official and his wife and they are distraught. They are terrified. This will not be questioning as usual. If you have a question, you may ask it after Schultz and I have completed our questions. You will be polite and respectful and show proper deference. Is that clear?”

  I nodded. T. Laine nodded. Everyone nodded. I had a feeling that anyone who disagreed would have been put out of the room with extreme prejudice. The SSSAIC was scary. She picked up the mic, clicked it on, gave the date and time, and introduced herself. “This is Elizabeth Crowley, Secret Service. I am joined by . . .” She held the mic to Schultz, who gave her name and rank. Crowley then pointed the mic at T. Laine, who said, “PsyLED Special Agent Tammie Laine Kent.”

  Crowley went around the room and ended with a finger pointed at me. “PsyLED Probationary Special Agent Nell Nicholson Ingram.”

  Crowley looked back and forth between T. Laine and me, as if memorizing our faces and putting them together with a mental dossier she was keeping on each of us. “Anything I should know from your agency before we begin?”

  T. Laine shook her head no. I raised a hand the way I had in grade school. “Ming of Glass seems to be afraid that both attacks were actually aimed at her.”

  “The Master of the City of Knoxville?” Crowley asked.

  T. Laine’s fingers jerked out in some kind of warning, but I couldn’t interpret the gesture.

 
“No, ma’am. Ming of Glass is Blood Master of Clan Glass, but there is no MOC. Knoxville falls under the territory of Leo Pellissier of New Orleans.”

  I could see things taking place behind Crowley’s eyes, but I couldn’t interpret them either. “I see. And Ming of Glass. She was here?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you let her leave?”

  Oh dear. “Ummm . . .” Now I could interpret T. Laine’s finger wave. It was a Keep your mouth shut signal.

  “We’ll talk after.” She pointed at the suit closest to the door. “Bring them in.”

  They brought Senator Tolliver and his wife in, and I focused all my senses and abilities on them. The senator looked younger than his age, his face taut and firm, with minimal wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. A self-important, condescending man, hiding behind a façade that was usually friendly, interested, but that façade was cracked now, and arrogance was peeking through, making his eyes hard and dark. His nose was slightly hooked, nostrils a little too thin to be called handsome. The senator’s wife, Clarisse, was younger than he, her face pale, her mascara smudged, as if she had been crying. She wore her hair in a dark, short bob streaked blond, and had blue eyes. She held on to the senator’s hand under the table and he leaned to her, saying quietly, “It’s almost over. We’ll be home soon.”

  She touched her mouth, an indication of nerves, and said, “I’m just worried about Devin.”

  “The Secret Service are with him. He’s in good hands.” Her husband smiled. “He’s probably asleep. And if not, then he’s beating the pants off them at some video game.”

  Clarisse laughed shakily and touched his shoulder. She seemed like a china doll woman, easily breakable or maybe already broken and glued back together so the porcelain face was what the public usually saw, and not the hurting, fractured woman beneath.

  “You can do this,” he whispered.

  Her face changed; she gave a practiced smile to her husband and then to Crowley, the perfect doll-face mask back in place. The senator studied her a moment, then nodded to proceed.

  “Thank you for helping us with the timeline,” Crowley said. “It’s very important to the investigation and I appreciate the care and effort it must take after two such violent and horrifying situations.”

  “I’ve never been in a firefight before,” Clarisse said. “It happened so fast.”

  “What time did you arrive at the restaurant?” Crowley asked.

  I listened with half an ear and turned my attention to other things, like the hallway just beyond us, where a stretcher, covered by a white sheet over a formless shape, was rolled past. I was glad Clarisse wasn’t looking.

  “Who was your waiter?” Crowley asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Clarisse said. “Do you, dear?”

  “Mark? Luke? I remember it was one of the gospels. I’m usually better at names,” Abrams said, sounding self-deprecating, as if to indicate his bravery and confusion.

  “Where were you seated?” Schultz asked. “Could you see out into the street?”

  “No, we were seated side by side, facing the kitchen,” Abrams said. “The chef is supposed to be quite amazing. We had just placed our order and were talking small talk and business.”

  “The waiter was bringing our soup. He had just stepped from the kitchen. The tray full of soup bowls exploded,” Clarisse said, her eyes growing wider, her fingers touching her mouth again. “Then the man across from me jerked.” Her fingers pressed hard against her lips and she spoke through them. “He was just getting ready to stand, leaning forward and up. His head went bloody and blood splattered all over the woman behind him. People started screaming. I started screaming.” Her eyes filled with tears and I realized that she was wearing colored contacts, the eyes beneath them gray and not the pretty blue she showed to the world. I remembered the contacts on the corpse’s eyes at the Holloways’ house. Was there a connection? With contact lenses? No. That was foolish. Clarisse wiped her eyes, smearing the mascara even more. “Can we please go?”

  “I think we’re done here. I need to get my wife home,” Abrams said, standing, giving a politician’s smile, one that said several things at once. The most obvious was that he was too important to deal with the kind of questioning suffered by the hoi polloi and that he had been far more patient than he had to be. “I can come in tomorrow to give a statement. My wife will be writing hers and sending it in by e-mail. I have your card. If there are problems with that arrangement you can certainly speak with my attorney.”

  “Of course, Senator. Thank you for staying and talking to us. If we have further questions we’ll be in touch, but I can’t imagine that will be necessary,” Crowley said smoothly. “Stevens, see them safely to their Secret Service escorts and then to their car, please. Make sure they get away safely. And see Justin Tolliver and his wife in.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” a suit said and opened the door. “This way, Senator, Mrs. Tolliver.”

  “My brother and his wife had to leave,” Abrams Tolliver said. “Babysitter complications. He said to call and he’d come to you at your convenience.” Abrams held out a hand to Crowley. “Our cards with office and private contact information.”

  “Thank you,” Crowley said, though it was clear she was peeved that someone had left her interrogation site.

  When they were gone, Crowley turned off the mic and looked around the room. “Comments?”

  “One,” I said. “He had a crust of mud on his shoe. It was a dress shoe. Fancy. He was in the city. Why mud?”

  “Anything particularly odd about the mud?” she asked, as if humoring me.

  “Not a thing,” I said, “if he was a farmer. He’d been in a car and a restaurant, not a field.”

  “Nell,” T. Laine said.

  “What? You think she’s gonna bite me?”

  “Speaking of biting, why did you let Ming of Glass go?” Crowley asked smoothly. It was a cop question, slid in when not expected, hoping to get a reaction.

  “Because she wasn’t in the restaurant when the firing started. She drove up later. She waited around for a while in case you needed to talk to her, but then she left. I’ve got her number if you need to talk to her.” I held up my cell.

  “You have the Master of the—” She stopped. “You have the number of Ming of Glass in your personal cell phone database?”

  “Her security guard, actually.” Whose name I didn’t know. Calling her Yummy would be embarrassing, but the SSSAIC didn’t ask for it. “I wouldn’t call in the daytime. That’s like poking a sleeping lion with a stick.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” Crowley stood and gathered her belongings, her face expressionless, her emotions indecipherable. “Include that information in your report,” she said to me. To the others, she said, “You are all dismissed. I expect reports in my e-mail by ten a.m.”

  We all filed out of the room and into the cleanup.

  There were three wounded and one dead, not counting the officer, lots of rounds fired, and no one had seen anything. I scanned the files being put together by JoJo and recognized none of the victims’ names. Worse, with the exception of the presence of the senator and the expected presence of Ming of Glass, Jo could find nothing that tied any of the dead or wounded to each other or to the people at the Holloways’ party. The worry about assassination or domestic—or paranormal—terrorism was still a very real possibility.

  • • •

  Near dawn, JoJo said into my earpiece, “Nell, I got a vamp calling, saying she needs her taxi driver at University of Tennessee Medical Center. She asked for Maggot.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said. But I slid off my chair and jogged to my truck. I gave her my ETA and once again appreciated the superheater in the old Chevy.

  • • •

  Yummy opened the passenger door, looked over the interior, and said, “You have got to b
e kidding.”

  “Nope. You could call an Uber.”

  Her face scrunched in distaste; she slid in and closed the door. “Hell, Maggot. Can’t you afford a new car? Doesn’t PsyLED provide you a car? Does it have a radio?” She punched the buttons and twisted the knobs.

  “Probably. Eventually. And yes. But it stopped working last week. Buckle up.” I slid her a sideways glance and pulled into the light five a.m. traffic as she complied. “No working radio. We’ll have to talk,” I said.

  “About maggots?”

  I laughed. “About life. Tell me about yourself.”

  “I’m sure you have a dossier on me. Read it.”

  “My time’s valuable.” I let my words glide into church-speak. “You’uns ain’t important enough to me to read it.”

  Yummy burst out laughing and twisted around in the seat so her legs were splayed, one knee angled at me. “I like you, Nell.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “You’re not gonna say you like me?”

  “My mama taught me to be polite and to not lie. Those two things aren’t always mutually agreeable.”

  Yummy laughed again and dropped her head against the back window with a soft thud. Her very pale blond hair swung and fell still. “I was born the first time in 1932 in a little town in South Louisiana. I was turned in 1953 by a vamp named Grégoire, who said he loved me and that we should be together forever. He looked fifteen but in the sack he was truly immortal.” Yummy glanced my way. “He could do things with his mouth . . .”

  Yummy was testing the waters, seeing how far she could go. I had learned quickly that no reaction was the best reaction when dealing with paranormal creatures, especially the predatory kind. I didn’t react, just eased through a green light and up behind an early school bus.

  Yummy went on. “Sadly, when I woke up dead in 1960—early by Mithran standards—Grégoire had moved on emotionally and sexually and was sleeping with young men and the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, a former and once-again lover. In the intervening years my brothers went to war and never came back, my father died of a heart attack working in a paper mill, and Mama remarried and moved away.” Yummy’s accent had changed as she spoke, taking on a twang I didn’t really recognize, maybe Frenchy Southern. An accent that was biscuits and gravy with hot sauce and alligator sausage or something. It was slightly like Rick’s when he was tired or angry, but softer, more melodious. She went on, now sounding a little sad, and I had to wonder if she knew she was giving so much away, or if she just needed to talk and didn’t care what she exposed about herself. “Instead of being head-over-heels in love, I was part of the Clan Arceneau blood family. But I was alone, a blood-sucker of little consequence, living with fangheads I didn’t much like and what amounted to human slaves. I was a small fish in a large fishbowl full of predators, all with bigger teeth than I had.”