Hard Magic (18 page)

Stosser slapped the table with the flat of his hand, making me jump. “And this, puppies, is why it’s so important to be on the scene immediately. If we’d been able to see the bodies, before they were moved or pawed over, we would be able to determine if current was used offensively on the body, and pick up the aggressor’s signature. But we weren’t, we didn’t, and we couldn’t, and so we don’t have that. So we need secondary support for this theory. We need to run some tests, see how much current is actually required to choke someone to death, and if it would leave physical trace.”

Even Sharon looked taken aback at that, and Stosser did a double take at the looks. “What? Oh, no! Not on each other, no. We’ll build a model. Do none of you watch
Myth-Busters?
”

Venec shook his head, clearly more used to the way his partner’s brain worked than the rest of us. “I’m sure we can get an unemployed dummy that will do the job. No need to put temptation in Sharon’s path.”

There was a snicker from somewhere, quickly muffled before the source could be identified.

“Right.” Venec kept us moving along. “What next?”

Nobody else seemed ready to say anything, so I figured it was my turn, get people away from the potentially pleasing thoughts of choking each other.

“I met with William Arcazy. Had a public spat with the vics about a month before they died. He’s a lawyer, working in a very hot little boutique firm specializing in interesting problems.”

“Interesting how?”

“They try not to talk too much about their clients, but I took a look at some of the papers that were left out on desks.” I wasn’t proud, but then, he should have put them away before letting me in, right? Ditto for his assistant, who walked away from his or her desk and left things out in full view of anyone with good eyesight and inquisitive intent. “Apparently Mr. Arcazy specializes in people who have long conversations with Federal Marshals, and then disappear, among other sidelines. That, by the way, means that they have access to a lot of privy information…and generally, for lawyers, are on the up-and-up. At least, the ones who aren’t crooked, are.” Some of that had been in the original file, complemented by the case they were working on now, via the paperwork I’d scoped. The last bit I’d gotten out of Will during dinner. He’d been pragmatic but disapproving of the level of corruption in his field. At least outwardly.

“And is Mr. Arcazy, Esquire, on the up-and-up?” Venec asked. It didn’t sound as if he knew I’d gone above and beyond the order of business. Maybe. Maybe I wouldn’t have to write up a report after all. Somehow, I suspected Stosser was still going to want a written report. As a physical reminder of the lesson, if nothing else.

“He admits to having been in business with the vics, and to having words with them when things started to go sour. But…I don’t know. I got the vibe that he was telling me the truth.”

Sharon’s truth-scrying gift would have been useful to have, to confirm that vibe, and for the first time I wondered why the Guys hadn’t sent her to interview anyone.

“You sure about that? That the vibe wasn’t something else?”

Excuse me? There was an accusation in that question, oh yeah. I guess he did know, after all. I didn’t want to look at Venec, not with those eyes looking my way, but I’d never been ashamed of my actions, and I wasn’t going to start now. I lifted my head and gave as good as I got, glarewise.

“Yes, I’m sure. Nothing he said or did was the act of a man with any kind of grudge or—” I stopped, struck by something.

“Or what?”

I held up a forefinger, to indicate I was still processing. “Will said he did a lot of deals with the victims—their smarts and his money, investing in buildings and then reselling them once they were renovated. He was pleased with the return, but opted out because he wanted the money for something else, so if anything they’d be the ones to want to kill him, not the other way around.”

“But they did have a loud, public argument?” Venec knew they did, damn him. It was in the dossier I’d read on the way to interview Will; that’s how I had known to follow up on it.

“About his investing his money without them—I guess they weren’t happy with him cutting them out of any deals, but again, isn’t that more cause for them to do him harm, not the other way around? But what I was wondering was, are there other partners, people who gave them money and weren’t happy with their returns? That car was expensive—maybe someone bought it with money they expected to get, and then didn’t?”

I was starting to roll on that idea. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but killing someone with the vehicle that symbolized everything that went wrong? That’s the kind of thing that would appeal to anyone who would go to this kind of bother, including destroying all traces, rather than just shoot them. Plus, it would be a way to get rid of the car while they were at it.”

“They had to have bought it first, though, so a dealer should’ve had records. And not file a police report?” Sharon said. “How would they get insurance money, which they’d probably want, after being out cash already?”

There’s always a nitpicker. “Maybe they didn’t insure it? If it was used in a murder scheme, I sure as hell wouldn’t have. I don’t know, I’m proposing theories here, not answers.”

Venec seemed to think it was a reasonable theory. “This kind of deal, the whole setup, wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. There had to be a reason, and probably not a brand-new one. Going on Bonnie’s idea, we should be looking at people with older grudges, not brand-new ones. Ian?”

Stosser nodded agreement at his partner. “Female, business deals, say two-year to two-month window, to start? I’ll put in a call and see what I can get. The rest of you, it’s late. Lawrence, your report is already on my desk?”

He nodded, looking a little smug.

“All right. Everyone go get some sleep, and we’ll start fresh in the morning.”

We stood, and started to file out. Stosser was right; everyone was dragging something fierce.

“Torres. A word with you?”

That? Was not the sound of anything good. Despite his approval of my theory, I had a sudden fear I was about to get canned.

I waited until the room had cleared out, and it was just me and Venec. The tension between us was well past simmering, but not in the good way.

“I don’t care what you do on your own time. You’re a smart woman, and I’m not going to read you any lectures about interpersonal relations or STDs because it’s none of my damn business. But I don’t care how badly you need your itch scratched, you do not, and I repeat
do not
ever screw a suspect, no matter how many vibes you have or how ironclad his alibi appears, or I will can your ass so fast you won’t know what side to sit down on. Are we understanding each other?”

We were.

Venec glared at me once for good measure, and walked out of the room.

It took a few seconds, but my lungs unfroze and I could breathe again. Contrary to recent events with J, I was not used to screwing up, or being called on the carpet. It stung. Worse, it stung because never mind how he found out, and never mind what he might think of me, Venec was totally, completely right. I’d let the itch overpower the brain.

Never again. As I’d said to J, this job was too important to me, already. I wanted it. I might even
need
it.

Still, the fallout wasn’t all bad. Sure, getting reamed by your boss was decidedly un-nice, but I was still employed, my limbs were all still attached, and he hadn’t told me not to see Will again ever, specifically….

Just not so long as he was still a suspect.

After pulling an all-nighter to get my report done and on the boss-Guy’s desk as ordered, I still managed to get in at eight-fifty the next morning, and found the pot of coffee already half-gone and a buzz of voices flowing throughout the office. The rest of the day was pretty tense, everyone wound up tight with the waiting, and the coffeepot barely ran dry before another was made. Even so, Venec had to order us out around 8:00 p.m. before anyone would leave, and we were all back by 8:00 a.m. the next morning, looking sheepish but determined.

Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be us.

We needed another go at that car, but according to Venec’s contact in the Chicago P.D., it was scheduled for auction this week, meaning that they were busy cleaning and prepping that sucker. Any evidence we might have missed was now hopelessly compromised. We’d have to find another route.

Now, if someone could just come up with a brilliant idea what that route might be, we’d be all set. Until then, we were spinning our own wheels and fiddling thumbs, and generally getting on each other’s nerves. We’d had a taste of what action would be like, and we wanted more of it.

Interestingly enough, other than a few blown fuses, we were all controlling our current pretty well, and the gremlins seemed to have taken a short break from pestering us.

On the nonwork side, Venec seemed to have dropped the entire question of how I spent my personal time, and I was avoiding the new voice mail on my hotel phone from Will, asking if he could see me again. It was easier to spend time at the office, helping Nick recraft the illumination spell so that it hit only the thing we were looking for, without giving the very retro disco flare. So far, no luck. How difficult could “find and illuminate” be?

“Careful!” Nick threw up his hands to protect his eyes, and I ducked and turned away a half second too late.

Apparently, really difficult.

After the last dose of neon-green sparkles left me with blurred vision and an oncoming headache, I left him to it, and went for more coffee.

“You know, if you’re right—and I’m not saying you are, but if you are and the killer did choose the car for emotional reasons…he or she might want it back. You know, as a trophy.”

Pietr was kicking on the sofa in the main room, talking out loud, while Sharon read the morning’s
Times
and Stosser stared at the popcorn-treated ceiling as though he was contemplating putting in a skylight, and never mind the fact that we were only renting the place.

Interestingly enough, the entry/waiting room seemed to be becoming our main gathering spot, and not just because the coffee was there, or because the sofa was comfortable, although neither of those things hurt.

I finished doctoring my coffee—whatever beans Venec was buying, they were too bitter to drink black—and sat on the chair opposite Pietr, knocking his feet off the edge. “That’s nasty thinking,” I told him.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Sharon said without lifting her head from the paper.

“No, it actually means it probably
is
true. Human nature tends toward the nasty when nobody’s looking. Good thought, Pietr.”

From the gratified look on Pietr’s face, I don’t think he’d thought the boss was actually listening to him. He should have known better, by now. The Guys were always listening. Especially when you wished they weren’t.

“So, let’s follow up on that. Without any legal paper trail and no current-trail, we can’t backtrack, so we’ll have to go forward. I want you at that auction, to see who bids on it. Bonnie, you go with him. Get the auction details from Ben.”

I didn’t know why Stosser was sending me, considering my near-monumental screwup, but I wasn’t going to argue. If this was another test, I wasn’t going to fail. And if it wasn’t—it got me out of the office, and away from that message on my answering machine.

I got up and checked in with Venec.

“What do you want, Bonnie?”

“A raise, for one,” I said, and only after the words left my mouth realized that they could have been taken a number of different ways. Ooops. “Also world peace, a decent apartment for three hundred a month, and to be ten pounds lighter without giving up chocolate. What I’ve got is the day’s orders, from Stosser.”

“Humph.”

“I’m supposed to get the information on the auction from you.”

“You’re going?”

“What, am I supposed to be grounded?”

We stared at each other for what felt like forever, and I could feel my core start to simmer again, little crackles of energy that were probably going to give me some kind of magical indigestion. Something moved under that iron control of his, and I’d swear I felt an answering surge from his core…and then it was gone, as if nothing had ever happened between us.

“Here you go.” He handed me a slip of paper, and went back to whatever it was on the table that had his attention before I walked in.

I took the slip and left, shutting the door behind me as though it was made of spun sugar.
Men.
Maybe I’d start looking for a girlfriend; the drama was higher but the overall stress was usually a lot less.

I took the info to Pietr, and we made plans. The auction wasn’t until the next afternoon, and since our budget wasn’t exactly up to multiple airplane tickets cross-country, it looked like Translocation time again for us. Great. Translocation was a fabulous time-saver, and having someone else do it meant you didn’t waste any of your own current. But the unavoidable seconds between looking and jumping meant that you always ran the risk of someone being there when you arrived, and that sometimes got sticky.

On the plus side, that allowed me time to go take a look at a couple of apartments before we left. I made a phone call, got grudging permission from Stosser to leave early, and hit the A train, heading even farther uptown with newspaper under my arm and a notepad in my bag.

Apartment-hunting in New York City isn’t like finding a place to live anywhere else. Okay, first you have to know your neighborhoods; that’s like anywhere. And you need your list of must-haves, and a budget, right. Only that list and that budget would probably put anyone outside of London, Tokyo, and San Francisco into a perpetual state of what-the-fuck? Because the three places I looked at, each in a semidecent but not fabulous neighborhood, were studios the size of a shoe box with kitchenettes the size of a postage stamp, and although the bathrooms were clean and functional, that was about all you could say for them.

On the plus side, two of the three were on the top floor, meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about someone stomping overhead when I was trying to sleep, and one of those two actually had a reasonably pretty view out the largest window—a small park, complete with a dog-run. I didn’t have a dog, and didn’t want a dog, but they were fun to watch. It was a walk-up, but that also meant I never had to worry about the elevator breaking down, right? And the neighborhood, although not great, was trendy right now, which meant that there was an upside just waiting to happen.

J would be horrified, and demand that I look for somewhere in midtown with a doorman, never mind the extra cost. But there was something about the place, despite the flaws, that appealed to me. It was prewar, so the detailing was nice and the ceilings were high, meaning I could put in a loft bed, something that had always sounded like fun.

“Put a deposit down now,” the broker told me, “and it’s yours.”

The rent would come near to killing me. I’d be stuck drinking office coffee, no more lattes from around the corner. On the other hand, the apartment was near the subway, only about twenty minutes from the office, and yeah the kitchen was sad, but the view was pretty….

“I need to think about it,” I hedged.

The broker, an impatient-looking guy in his forties, with the body of a teddy bear and the face of a street brawler, sighed heavily. “Chicklet, there is no thinking. Either you take it, or the next person in will write a check and you’re shit outa luck. Move fast or be homeless.”

It might have been a sales pitch, but everyone else in the office already had a place…why was I waiting?

I walked around the one room, taking note of the paint, the worn tiles, the hum of the refrigerator in the otherwise-empty space, and thinking. It didn’t take long, either the walking or the thinking. I was really, really tired of living out of a hotel room, even if that room was just about the same size as this entire apartment. And I could afford this place, if barely, and okay, the kitchen was sad, I could work with that because what other choice did I have? A place with a kitchen that met my standards would cost me another couple of hundred in rent, minimum, assuming I could even find one, and…

I was really tired of living out of J’s pocket, no matter how comfortable that pocket might feel. And then there was that whole “mine and nobody else can come in” thing, too.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

That night in the hotel room, I almost erased the message from Will. Almost.

In the end, I went to bed with his voice still caught in electronic format, and I dreamed of a mastodon trying to take a shower in my new apartment.

I have no idea how the two were connected, but I was pretty sure they were.

Translocation the next morning went off without a problem, dropping me in the upper level of a parking garage near the location of the auction. Pietr appeared at the same time, a reassuring distance away. I’d never heard of a Translocation collision, but then again, who would be left to talk about it?

Chicago was pretty today, blue skies and a soft breeze. Perfect Autumn weather. The auction, though, was about as bare bones and depressing as such a thing could get. Forget about Sotheby’s and think more closeout or lost-our-lease sale. For all that, though, there were a lot of people wandering around, some of them surprisingly well dressed, and the energy was pretty high with the anticipation of getting a deal, I guess. We sat in the back row, damped down and subdued, trying not to attract any attention while taking in as much detail as we could. I liked Pietr—he was good to work with—but I didn’t really know him, not the way I’d gotten to know Nick. That made small talk difficult, even for me.

“You really think the—” I almost said killer, and changed it at the last moment to “—person we’re looking for will try to buy the car, keep it like some kind of trophy?”

“It’s possible,” Pietr said, crossing his legs in front of him and flipping through the catalog idly. They were featuring cars today, but there was a lot of other stuff, too: a houseboat—not currently on the lot, but they had pictures—and a couple of speedboats. Vehicle seizure and resale was big business in Chicago, apparently.

“People are sick.”

“People are not sick,” he said, surprising me. “People are basic. The stuff that drives us is basic. Hunger. Hatred. Lust. Fear. Sometimes even love. Revenge is hatred and lust and fear all in one neat package, and packs three times the kick as any one of those things alone. That’s why we crave it.”

“Oh man, someone worked you over but good, didn’t they?” I would never have said that in the group, or if we were alone, but surrounded by strangers, waiting to spy on strangers, the words just came out of my mouth.

“Nobody ever worked me over, good or bad.” He flipped a few more pages of the program. “Nobody ever noticed I was there long enough to do anything at all.”

Pietr said it so quietly, so calmly, it took me a moment to process.

“You’ve always …sorta disappeared under stress, huh?”

“Sometimes I didn’t even need stress. When I was a kid—” he laughed, and it wasn’t a ha-ha laugh “—my folks used to routinely leave without me, because they didn’t remember I wasn’t in the car with them. I thought it would get better, once we moved to the States, but… My junior prom, my date left with someone else, because she thought I’d skipped out on her.”

“Oh…man.” I really wanted to do something, or say something that would make, I don’t know, all those crap memories go away, or never have happened. Wasn’t a damn thing to do, though. The past isn’t ever really gone. Everything we’ve been through, it makes us what we are now. For me, it was finding J, and losing Zaki. For Pietr…

I watched the people in the rows ahead of us, and determined that I would never, ever again make a comment about his disappearing on us. Not ever.

Most of the crap cars went first, sold for cheap enough I wondered if the local cops made back their costs, or if they got to take it as a tax deduction. A couple of them were in bad enough shape I wasn’t sure they’d be drivable off the lot—I guess you could buy for scrap and parts, too.

“And here’s lot 389, one a lot of people may have been waiting for. A beauty of a machine…”

We were on. The car was rolled out into the display area so everyone could get a good last look. It gleamed under the overhead fluorescents, practically begging for someone to take it for a mad spin down a deserted highway.

“Suicide scene,” I heard someone say. “No bloodstains, though. Should go for a decent price.”

The bidding started, and I tuned everything out, letting my eyes do all the work. Pan and scan, one end of the crowd to the other, looking at everything and not looking for anything in particular. I had no idea what Pietr was doing, although it was probably some variation of the same. There were a lot of people intent on the car, and even more who weren’t paying a damn bit of attention. The auctioneer was hopping around and talking fast, and the numbers he was chanting kept going up.

Something caught my attention, and I slowed the pan down a bit, enough for that blur of color to come into focus.

Jack Reybeorn, and an older woman with him. Not the client, but maybe the other woman who had been part of the conference? Yes. An aunt or sister, some female relative, from the looks.

All right, they had a legitimate, if morbid reason to be here, I supposed. They were paying close attention, but didn’t seem to be part of the bidding. Someone could be doing it for them, a broker or dealer, but…they might also just be here for some kind of closure. Maybe.