Текст книги "Known Devil"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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“Looks like Newton’s about ten miles west of Boston,” Scanlon said after a minute or two. “Was that just idle curiosity, or do you know something?”

“We know something,” I told him. “Whether it’s relevant you’ll have to decide for yourself.”

Karl told Scanlon what his confidential informant had said about Boston hit man John Wesley Harding, and I added that the Calabrese consigliere, Loquasto, had all but confirmed it for me earlier in the evening.

“Hit man from Boston, Claymore mines stolen from near Boston, modified Claymores used to take out a couple of Delatasso soldiers in Scranton,” Scanlon said. “Could be a coincidence, I suppose.”

“You see that a lot in our business?” I asked him.

“Not so much, no,” he said. “If this guy Harding has got any kind of a rep back home, Boston PD’s Organized Crime Unit should have something on him – maybe even a picture or two. I’ll talk to a guy I know on the force there, see what he can turn up.”

“Anything you get, we’d appreciate a copy,” I said.

“Oh, good,” he said, “because I always feel like crap at the end of my shift unless I’ve done at least one favor for the Occult Crimes Unit.”

Sarcastic bastard.

After everything that had happened – official and unofficial – so far tonight, I was hoping that the rest of our shift would be quiet. It was quiet, alright. For a couple of people, it was quiet as the grave.

As luck would have it – whether good luck or bad you can decide for yourself – our route back to the station house took us down Penn Avenue, right past the apartment building that Roger Gillespe had called home. I might have forgotten about that fact, if it wasn’t for those flashing red lights coming from around the corner on Spruce Street to serve as a reminder.

As we approached the corner, I said to Karl, “Slow down. I want to see where all the action is coming from.”

Karl looked sideways at me but did as I asked. “You thinking it’s what’s-his-name, Gillespe?”

“No – I’m hoping that it isn’t.”

Yet another one of my hopes hit the ground with a thud as we reached the corner and I saw the squad cars parked in front of Gillespe’s building, along with the ambulance. Each vehicle had its red lights going, and I bet Roger Gillespe’s neighbors just loved that – especially the ones who had to get up the next morning.

“Find some place to pull over, will you?” I said to Karl. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“You’re not the only one,” he said.

Karl found a parking space, and we walked the half-block or so back to what was clearly a crime scene. Our badges got us past the uniform who was stationed at the yellow tape to keep the morbidly curious away, and they got us in the front door of Gillespe’s building, as the two uniforms standing there stood aside to let us pass.

“Which apartment?” I asked one, a tall guy with a big nose named Zawatski, who’s a third-generation cop. I’d been seeing him at crime scenes for years.

“It’s number nine, Sarge,” he said. “Upstairs.”

“Have they got an ID on the vic?”

“Not that I know of, but the name on the lease is ….” He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and checked it. “Gillespe, Roger J.”

I didn’t exactly fall down with shock. That’s the problem with my bad feelings – they’re almost always right. I asked Zawatski, “Who’s ROS?” I wanted the name so that I’d know what kind of lies to get ready, if any.

Zawatski stowed his notebook away. “Homicide dick named Eisinger.”

Behind me, I heard Karl mutter, “Great. Just fucking great.”

“Thanks,” I said to Zawatski.

The other uniform opened the door for us, and Karl and I went past him and started up the stairs. Nate Eisinger was the kind of cop who would probably refer to black people as “niggers,” except Scranton’s African-American population is so small, he doesn’t get much chance. But there’s no shortage of supes in this town, and Eisinger doesn’t exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings about them, either.

Maybe he’d keep his bigoted opinions to himself once Karl and I got to apartment nine , either because 1) I outranked him, 2) racist remarks to another cop could get him brought up on charges, or 3) Karl might be tempted to tear his throat out.

Once we got to the second floor, it wasn’t hard to figure out which apartment had belonged to Roger Gillespe, since only one had a uniformed cop standing in front of it. As we walked down the hall, I said softly to Karl, “Don’t let Eisinger get under your skin. It’ll only make him happy.”

“I’ll try to make sure he stays miserable, then.”

Whether he recognized us or just saw the badges hanging over our jacket pockets I don’t know, but the uniform at the open apartment door just nodded at us and stepped aside. Past the door was what I assumed to be the living room of the late Roger Gillespe, former busboy and drug dealer.

The big-screen TV mounted on one wall, along with the DVR and fancy-looking DVD player hooked up to it, were the only signs that Gillespe had been earning more than a busboy’s salary. Otherwise, the place was a dump, with peeling wallpaper, a puke-green carpet that was worn through in several places, and furniture that Goodwill probably would have turned down. It wasn’t a big room, and it felt crowded. In addition to Karl and me, the small space now contained another bored-looking uniformed cop, a couple of forensics techs crawling around on their hands and knees, and Detective Second Grade Nathan Eisinger, the pride of the Homicide Squad, who was writing something down in a small notebook. Roger Gillespe was there, too, but I didn’t think the extra company bothered him.

He lay on his back, arms spread wide, as if he’d been held down while he died. His eyes were bulging and red – it looked like every blood vessel in them had burst, which is probably just what happened. A thin stream of blood had trickled down from his nose to stain Gillespe’s lower face as well as the torn blue “AC/DC” T-shirt that he wore.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, or a werewolf by his fur. And just because Nathan Eisinger looks like he could’ve been a poster boy for the Waffen-SS, with his crew-cut blond hair, square jaw, and blue eyes the color of Delft china, doesn’t automatically make him a racist, fascist, low-rent asshole. In Eisinger’s case, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

He finished what he’d been writing, looked up, and saw Karl and me for the first time. His pale eyebrows went up theatrically. “Well, if it isn’t the Supe Squad! Welcome to our little crime scene,” he said with the exaggerated courtesy that’s always intended as an insult.

I said, “Eisinger,” and Karl just nodded.

“So what brings you two… detectives over here this evening? One of the neighbors thinks she saw a ghost?”

I just shook my head, and Eisinger went on. “Because I sure didn’t call for you – no reason to. The corpus delicti here” – he nodded toward the body on the floor – “ain’t one of your supes, far as I can tell.”

Corpus delicti has nothing to do with a corpse, even though it sounds like it should. The term refers to the legal doctrine that you have to be able to prove a crime’s been committed before you can charge somebody with it. Eisinger knew that as well as I did. He was misusing the term deliberately, for the same reason he threw in “ain’t” despite being a college grad. He thinks it makes him sound like a real street cop, somebody not to be messed with.

I’ve never heard Scanlon say stuff like that, but then he doesn’t have to. He already knows he’s tough.

“No, we already made sure,” Eisinger said, and took a couple of steps toward the corpse. “Ain’t no skinner – we checked that with a moonlight test.” “Skinner” is a term some people use for “werewolf” – although if you say it in front of one, you’re going to have a fight on your hands, whether the moon’s out or not.

Looking down at the body, Eisinger said, “You can sniff his breath without needing to puke, so I’d say that rules out him bein’ a baby-muncher.”

There some urban legend that says ghouls like to hang around outside abortion clinics so that they can feast on the undeveloped tissue that’s discarded every day. Except that clinics don’t throw that material out with the trash – and even if they did, most ghouls wouldn’t have any interest. They’ve got too much class – which is more than I could say for Eisinger.

Then he slipped on a thin white evidence glove and dropped to one knee next to Roger Gillespe’s still form. Peeling back the upper lip, Eisinger said, “And this shows he wasn’t no leech, either.”

He looked up at Karl as he finished saying that, and his face had the kind of smirk you want to wipe off with a blunt instrument. “That’s enough,” I said, and my voice might’ve had a bit more snap to it than I’d intended.

“Oh, gosh, that’s right,” Eisinger said, playing all naive. I thought he sounded about as innocent as Adolf Eichmann. “I completely forgot that one of the bloodsucking undead was among us.” He looked at Karl. “No offense intended, Renfer.”

I felt Karl tense up next to me, but his voice was calm and businesslike as he said, “None taken – and it’s Detective Renfer.”

“Then I sure am sorry,” Eisinger said, “Detective.”

Before this got out of hand, I asked the question that had prompted me to come in here in the first place. “Gillespe here – how did he die?”

“Coroner’s report isn’t out yet,” Eisinger said. “Hell, they ain’t even done the autopsy, which you should know, since the dude is still lying here on the floor.”

I looked at him. “What, in your professional opinion, was the deceased’s cause of death?”

He gave me an exaggerated shrug. “Well, I’m no pathologist, but I’d say those plastic baggies that are jammed down his throat had something to do with it. Looks like there’s at least a dozen of ’em stuck down there. You want, I’ll send you one as a souvenir, once the post is done.”

“Don’t bother,” I said.

“What’s your interest in this dude, anyway?” Eisinger asked. “Him being human and all.”

“He was one of our CIs,” I said, which I guess was technically true. Roger Gillespe had given us information, and we had kept his name to ourselves, even if it wasn’t for the usual reasons of confidentiality. “Well, thanks for the info,” I continued, keeping most of what I felt out of my voice. I turned to go, but then noticed that Karl hadn’t moved. He was looking intently at Eisinger.

“Detective,” Karl said softly.

“What?” Eisinger looked at Karl, and I saw their eyes lock. The two of them stood, in what someone else would have taken to be a stare-down, for at least half a minute.

Then Karl said, in that same quiet voice, “We’ve all done things that we’re ashamed of, things we hope nobody ever finds out.”

“Yeah,” Eisinger said dully.

“Why don’t you tell us,” Karl said, “about the one thing you’ve done in your life that you’re most ashamed of. Say it nice and loud.”

Another few seconds went by before Eisinger said, in a monotone that was still loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “When I was fourteen, I started fucking my sister, Kathy. She was twelve. I said I’d kill her if she ever told anybody. It went on for over a year, two, three times a week – whenever our parents left us alone together. I made her do everything – oral, anal, the whole nine yards. And then one day she got one of my Dad’s guns and shot herself. Right in the heart. But she never told on me. Not even in the note she left.”

“Thanks, Detective,” Karl said, and broke off eye contact. “Thank you for sharing.” Then we got the hell out of there.

As we went down the stairs, I said quietly to Karl, “What the fuck was that?”

“Two things,” Karl said. He kept his voice down, too. “One of them was payback – and don’t tell me the bastard didn’t have it coming.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” I said. “But what was the other thing?”

“Practice.”

We didn’t say anything as we walked back to where we’d parked the car. Once he was behind the wheel, Karl clicked the button that would unlock the door on my side. I got in as he was buckling his safety belt. I got my own seatbelt on and waited, but Karl didn’t start the engine. Instead, he sat there, staring straight ahead.

I didn’t ask what was bothering him – I knew it was the same damn thing that was bothering me. After a couple of seconds, Karl said, “He wasn’t supposed to be there!” As he said “be,” Karl slammed the steering wheel with the butt of his palm.

“I know,” I said.

“He was supposed to be halfway to fucking California by now, not dead on the floor of his fucking living room!” He slammed the wheel twice more for emphasis as he said that.

“Karl.”

“What?”

“You’re gonna break the steering wheel, you keep that up.” Vampires are a lot stronger than humans, but Karl sometimes forgets that – especially when he’s pissed off.

“Oh, right. Sorry. But dammit, Stan…”

“Yeah, I know. I know.”

After a couple of seconds went by, I said, “Is it possible your Influence didn’t work?”

“Didn’t work? Shit, you heard the kid, Stan. He spilled his guts to us that night, and he didn’t do it cause we offered him a candy bar. It worked, alright.”

“I was thinking more of what you told him to do later,” I said. “The post-hypnotic suggestion, or whatever the hell vampires call what you did. Maybe it… wore off after a couple of hours or something. Can that happen?”

Karl looked away. “Fuck, I don’t know. Anything’s possible, I guess. I never said I was an expert at this stuff.”

“You did pretty well back there with Eisinger – which was pretty fucking ingenious, by the way. How’d you know he was going to say something like that?”

“I didn’t,” Karl said. “But everybody’s got some kind of dark secret they carry around with them. A guy like Eisinger, I figured it would be particularly nasty – and I was right, too.”

“Good work,” I said. “But you’ve earned yourself an enemy for life. You know that, right?”

“Fuck it – I don’t figure he was all that fond of me before, anyway,” Karl said. “What with me being one of the bloodsucking undead and all.”

“You’ve got a point.”

“Anyway, what I did back there was short-term. I don’t know if I’ve got that other stuff down, yet – what you called ‘post-hypnotic suggestion’.”

“Is there anybody you can ask about it?”

“Maybe, but what’s that matter now?” Karl said. “It’s not gonna do Roger any fucking good.”

“I was thinking for future reference,” I said. “In case you need to do it again sometime.”

“You mean with Slattery?”

“Maybe – assuming we get a crack at him.”

Karl sighed, which is a good trick for somebody who doesn’t need to breathe. “Yeah, alright. There’s some older vamps I could talk to about it. Hell, I could even ask Christine, I guess. She’s been undead a while, haina?”

“Seven years,” I said. “No – closer to eight.” I tried to keep what I was feeling out of my voice, and I think I succeeded. On the other hand, with a vampire, you never know for sure.

It had been almost eight years since I had convinced a vampire to bring Christine across to the world of the undead. It was either that or watch her die of leukemia. Selfish of me, maybe – especially since Christine had been unconscious from the painkillers and couldn’t give her consent. But after losing her mother, I just couldn’t stand the idea of being without the one person in my life who still loved me. After the change, Christine and I both had some issues to deal with, but we’d resolved them pretty well by now. I hope.

“I’ll ask her about it next time I see her,” Karl said.

Yeah, when the two of you aren’t busy fucking.

I didn’t say that out loud, of course. And as soon as the thought entered my head, I tried to push it out again. Guess I still had a few issues of my own.

Karl started up the car. “I suppose we oughta tell McGuire about what happened to Roger.”

“Yeah, along with the news that there’s a hit man in town with access to Claymore mines.”

“Yeah,” Karl said. “He’s especially gonna love that part.”

Back at the squad room, we brought McGuire up to speed. As Karl had predicted, nothing we had to say made the boss very happy.

“I was in the Air Force, not the Army,” McGuire said. “But even I know what a Claymore mine is. Never heard of one being modified to kill supes, though.”

“Word is that John Wesley Harding’s got himself quite a reputation,” I said. “Guess it had to come from somewhere.”

“Guys like that, their rep usually comes from the body count they rack up,” McGuire said. “Not ingenuity.”

“Maybe in Harding’s case, the one leads to the other,” Karl said.

McGuire took a swig from his coffee and put the mug aside. “And speaking of ingenuity, I guess you could apply that term to what happened to that informant of yours, Gillespe.”

We’d never told McGuire about the vampiric Q-and-A session we had with Roger Gillespe the other night, since it probably violated five or six department regulations. So in discussing Gillespe’s death just now, we’d explained our interest by saying that the guy had been one of our regular street sources of information. Which was true, really – except for the “regular” part.

“You mean the way they killed him?” Karl asked.

“Uh-huh,” McGuire said. “That thing with the baggies must’ve taken some time and trouble, even if they did have a couple of guys to hold Gillespe down. Shit, they could’ve just shot him in the head and been done in about two seconds. I’d say somebody’s trying to send a message.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Karl said. “But what message? And who’s it intended for?”

“The use of the baggies to kill him suggests that Gillespe was dealing,” McGuire said. “If that was the case, could be the stupid bastard tried to stiff his supplier. Or maybe he found his own source and decided to go into business for himself. In the drug trade, either of those things can get a guy killed.”

“So you think the message was intended for the other dealers?” I said. “Here’s what happens when you fuck with us.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing’s been done,” McGuire said. “You ever hear of a Colombian necktie?”

Karl and I both shook our heads, although I thought the term seemed vaguely familiar, like something I’d read about, years ago.

“The Colombian cartels,” McGuire said, “who control the wholesale end of the cocaine trade, have a way of dealing with people who piss them off. Been using it since the Sixties, I think. They slash the guy’s throat, and once he’s dead they take his tongue and yank it out through the wound so that it’s lying against his throat. Hence the term ‘Columbian necktie.’”

Karl made a face. “I wonder if somebody’s gonna come up with a cutesy term for the way Roger Gillespe was killed.”

“If it happens often enough, somebody probably will,” McGuire said. He shook his head. “They’ll probably start calling it the ‘Scranton Appetizer’ or something. Not the kind of fame the city needs.”

“There’s another possibility,” I said. “Could be that his supplier found out he’d been talking to us.” Roger Gillespe had only done so once, and involuntarily, but I thought it best not to mention that. “So maybe the message to the other dealers is Here’s what happens when you open your mouth to the wrong people.”

“And at the same time,” Karl said, “it’s a big fat ‘Fuck you’ to the cops who make use of guys like Roger for information.”

“It might also fit in with something else that happened tonight,” McGuire said.

We both looked at him, but instead of explaining, he nodded toward the squad room behind us. “Pearce and McLane caught it. You can get the details from them. Once you’ve heard what they have to say, let me know what you think.”

We went over to where McLane and Pearce were sitting, each one busy on his computer. Like Karl’s and mine, their desks were pushed together, facing each other.

I said to them, “The boss says you guys have a case that might fit in with something we’re working on. Mind telling us about it?”

“Sure, why not?” McLane said, and I noticed his partner nodding. “Gotta be more fun than filling out these goddamn forms.”

Karl and I got our own chairs and rolled them over close to Pearce and McLane’s desks. Once we were seated, I said, “Lot of weird shit going on lately, even by the standards of the Spook Squad.”

“Tell me about it,” Pearce said. He’s a big guy who used to box in the Golden Gloves. If his build didn’t give that away, his nose would – it’s been broken more times than a hooker’s promise.

“You’re talking about the gnome, right?” McLane asked. An awful case of acne as a teenager had left his face severely pockmarked. In another age, you’d figure him for a smallpox survivor. When he said “gnome”, I felt my pulse go into overdrive. I glanced toward Karl before telling McLane, “I don’t know – the boss didn’t tell us. He just said your case would interest us. And if it’s about a gnome, I’d say he was right.”

“Well, that’s what the vic was, no doubt about it,” Pearce said. “Four feet tall, more or less, white beard, big nose – he fits the profile to a T.”

“Then there was the name on his driver’s license,” McLane said. “Pedric Bonbink.”

“Yeah, that’s a gnome’s handle, alright,” I said.

“So what happened?” Karl asked.

“He lived in the basement unit of this building over on Adams Avenue, the Cody Apartments,” Pearce said. “Know it?”

Karl looked at me. “Didn’t we question a guy who lived there, couple of years ago?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “We thought he might be involved in a fairy dust smuggling ring that was operating in town, but nothing came of it.”

“Well, something sure as hell went down there, this time,” McLane said. “The super gets a call from one of the other tenants, who says there’s a really nasty odor coming from the basement. So he goes down there and sure enough, it smells like a boat full of mackerel that’s been left out in the sun all day. The gnome’s the only one living in the basement. The super bangs on the guy’s door. Gets no answer. So he uses his master key, lets himself in, and almost pukes because the smell is so overpowering. Then he gets a look at what’s causing it, runs outta there, and calls 666.”

“So the call gets routed to McGuire, and he sends us over there,” Pearce said. “The super was right about the stench – I’ve smelled some pretty nasty shit on this job, and I damn near heaved my guts out once we got inside that apartment. And that’s before we got a look at the gnome’s body.”

“Yeah, dead gnomes rot a lot faster than humans, or any other supe species I know of,” I said. “And they tend to smell a hell of a lot worse.”

“The corpse didn’t look so bad, actually,” McLane said. “We’ve seen a hell of a lot worse. The gnome was on the floor, with a bullet hole in his forehead, right between the eyes. Looks neat as you please – until you take a gander at the exit wound, which took out most of the back of his skull.”

“You get a look at the round that killed him?” Karl asked.

“There was a bullet hole in the wall, behind where the gnome had been standing,” Pearce said. “We knew the guys from Forensics would throw a fit if we dug it out ourselves, so we waited for them to do it. They took the slug with them to the lab for ballistics, but let us have a look at it first.”

“Nine millimeter,” McLane said. “Cold iron.”

“No surprise there,” I said. Gnomes are one of the many species of faerie, and all of them are vulnerable to cold iron. That’s why there’s a fey wing of the county jail where each cell’s bars are made of iron, not the steel that’s used elsewhere.

“No, but here’s something that is kinda surprising,” McLane said. “We waited around while Forensics tossed the place, looking for evidence. And guess what they found in Pedric Bonbink’s closet?” He waited, as if he really wanted us to take a stab at it.

“If you’re gonna make me guess,” I said, just to get it over with, “I’ll say a blue pinstripe suit from Brooks Brothers, size Extra-Extra-Small.”

That got a laugh from the other three, but not much of one.

“Not bad, but you’re wrong,” McLane said. “What they turned up was a red conical hat – the one you always see in cartoon drawings of gnomes. You know – the kind that real gnomes hate with a fucking passion.”

Karl and I looked at each other. “Well, now,” I said.

“We thought you’d find that interesting,” Pearce said. “We did the interviews with those vamp goombahs who were outside Ricardo’s when the bomb went off – the only living witnesses, if you can call them living.” He glanced at my partner. “No offense, Karl.”

Karl just nodded, his face impassive.

“We interviewed them separately,” McLane said. “And each one said more or less the same thing. That the driver of the bomb car, who jumped out and got into another vehicle that drove off just before the explosion, was a gnome – complete with that red fucking hat. Now, what does that sound like to you?”

“A little too good to be true,” Karl said.

“More than that,” I said. “It sounds like somebody’s cleaning house.”

We spent the next couple of hours in the squad room, catching up on paperwork while we waited to be sent out on a call. But when McGuire called us into his office, it wasn’t to give us an assignment – he gave us a big chunk of bad news instead.

Inside the office, we didn’t even have a chance to sit down before McGuire said, “I just heard from Slattery’s campaign manager. In order to show his respect for the forces of law and order who keep our city safe” – McGuire kept most of the sarcasm out of his voice – “Mister Slattery has agreed to come to police headquarters, accompanied by his attorney, of course, to answer questions pertaining to our investigation.”

McGuire took a second to look at Karl and me before he went on. “I’ve been told that because of his busy campaign schedule, the time of his appearance is not negotiable. Slattery will be here three days from now – at 11am.”

“Well, shit,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s one way to fucking put it,” McGuire said bleakly. “Pretty much puts the kibosh on our little plan to get Slattery and Karl in a room together, doesn’t it?”

“Where does this asshole get off telling the police what time we’re going to talk to him?” I said.

“There’s no arrest warrant out for him,” McGuire said with a shrug. “He’s not under indictment for anything, either.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, “but we still get to bring people in for questioning – on our terms. The law says so.”

McGuire nodded. “Sure it does. And if we exercise our power under the law with Slattery, what do you figure is gonna happen?” Before I had a chance to say anything, McGuire answered his own question. “It’ll go down like this,” he said. “Slattery calls a press conference to tell the world how even though he offered to cooperate with the ongoing criminal investigation, the city government is using its police power to harass its political opponents in an effort to stifle the democratic process and blah, blah, blah. Shit, it might even win him some votes.”

“You’re probably right, boss,” I said, “but I still think that you–”

“Maybe we can do it anyway.”

As soon as Karl said that, McGuire and I turned our heads to stare at him.

“I read an article, couple months ago, about a vampire who was able to stay awake during the daytime,” Karl said, “instead of turning into a corpse at sunrise, the way we all do.”

“How’d he manage that?” I said. “Or she.”

“Magic,” Karl said. “Dude had a witch cast a spell that let him keep functioning during the daytime. He still had to stay out of the sun, though – that didn’t change.”

“What kind of magic are we talking about here?” McGuire said. “White or black?”

“White, definitely,” Karl said. “All legal and aboveboard. I doubt they’d be writing about it in Supe magazine otherwise. It’s illegal to advocate the practice of black magic, boss – you know that, same as I do.”

“So this vampire that got the spell cast on him – he doesn’t have to rest during the day anymore?” I said.

“Nah, the spell’s not that good,” Karl said. “It only worked for one day, and the witch who did it had to spend a lot of time in preparation. I guess she did it as kind of an experiment in thaumaturgy. It’s not a consumer magic item yet – not by a long shot. Maybe it never will be.”

“But it worked at least once,” I said. “That’s what’s important.”

McGuire asked Karl, “Far as you know, did the vampire who did this suffer any ill effects?”

“The article didn’t mention any,” Karl said. “Except that the guy was really wiped out by the end of the next night, same as you might be after pulling an all-nighter.” He gave us a pointy grin. “Guess you could say he was dead tired.”

I sat there rubbing the bridge of my nose for a little while, then said, “I figure there’s a couple of things we need to do pronto.”

“I assume one of them involves getting a copy of that article Karl’s been talking about,” McGuire said.

“You assume right.” I turned to Karl. “Have you still got your copy of the magazine at home?”

“I doubt it,” he said. “I don’t usually keep stuff like that around once I’ve read it. But Supe’s got an online edition that I can access cause I’m a subscriber. They should have all the back issues in there.”

“Good,” I said. “How about you track down the article and print off three copies – one for me to read and one for the boss.”

“What’re you gonna do with the third one?” he asked me.

“Take it with me when I go downstairs to see Rachel.”

Rachel Proctor leaned back in her creaky desk chair and shook her lead slowly. “I’ve never heard of anything like that being done before, Stan,” she said. “I’m not even sure it can be done.”

“Then take a look at this,” I said, and handed her the article that Karl had downloaded from Supe magazine. She put on her glasses and read it slowly, her concentration so intense that I could almost feel it. I sat there in front of her desk, tried not to fidget, and kept my mouth shut. That’s something I should try more often – keeping my mouth shut, I mean.

Finally Rachel looked up and tossed the article onto her desk.

“Sounds interesting in principle,” she said, “but it’s kind of short on specifics. Supe is usually a decent enough source for news, but it’s no academic journal. It’s hard to know how much of this story is accurate.”

“There’s academic journals for magic?” I said. I’d never thought about it, but I guess it made sense. They’ve got professional publications for every other field. Christine had once showed me an article that had appeared in the online edition of something called Vampirology. The title was “Free Choice vs Influence: Ethical Issues in Recreational Exsanguination.” Or something like that.