Sparks (22 page)

"I think so. Do you remember a Calvin Dresser?" She waved the death cert in front of him.

Charon nodded.
"Yeah. Old guy. There wasn't anything for me to do. His spirit was gone when I got there.
"

"Good thing Gina can't hear you call a sixty-three-year-old man 'old.'"

Anya dug around on Gina's desk for a phone and a phone book. She looked up the main number for the university switchboard and dialed it.

"Could you transfer me to the Division of Anatomy at the medical school?"

"Please hold." Muzak began to play.

Anya continued to rifle through Gina's files.

"What are you looking for?"
Charon asked.

"I want to know what he looked like."

Anya dug through the manila file folders until she found one with a matching death cert number. She splayed the folder open on Gina's desk, cradling the phone receiver between her cheek and shoulder. She found a picture of a man in his early sixties, lying on the coroner's slab before he'd been undressed and washed. He was a balding man dressed in a sport coat that was easily twenty years out of date, a dress shirt, and creased pants. His expression in repose was one of bemusement. There were two red dents on the bridge of his nose, where Anya imagined a pair of glasses pinched. The file was thin; this had been a relatively straightforward case of the man passing away at home without any witnesses. It was a small wonder the medical examiner had gotten involved at all, but there had apparently been some question about the prescription drugs paramedics found in his home and proper dosages.

The Muzak cut off, and a voice came on the line:

"Division of Anatomy, Carla speaking."

"Hi, Carla. My name is Anya Kalinczyk. I'm an investigator with the Detroit Fire Department. I need to get a copy of Calvin Dresser's Anatomical Bequeathal Form."

"Please hold while I look that up for you, ma'am."

More of the dreadful Muzak. Anya stretched the phone cord to the far side of the room and slapped the death certificate into the copier. The old copier chugged to life and spat green light on the certificate, reluctantly spewed out a copy before coughing.

"Ms. Kalincyzk?"

"Yes?" Anya cradled the phone on her shoulder.

"Ma'am, we don't have a bequeathal form or a cremation authorization for anyone under that name."

Anya swallowed. "Thank you very much. I appreciate your help." She placed the phone down on the receiver and stared at it.

Brian had lied to her.

Calvin Dresser hadn't given permission to do jack shit to his remains. Brian had taken the body--who knew where it was now?--and conducted his own research on it. Anya felt her hands ball into fists. After all they had seen as members of DAGR, didn't he have any more respect for the dead than this?

Charon swung his feet.
"Did you find your missing body?
"

"I think so. But I'm not liking where it's turning up."

Anya's cell phone buzzed.

"Kalincyzk."

"It's Marsh. I finally found a judge with a big enough beef with Hope Solomon to sign a warrant. We got permission to search her office and car only, since that's where the photograph shows the evidence was taken."

Anya smiled, exhilarated. "Thank you, Captain."

"Don't thank me, Kalincyzk. Something tells me you're gonna have your work cut out for you when you go knocking on that woman's door."

Anya strode through Hope Solomon's beautifully appointed pastel lobby with a wall of DPD uniforms at her back. The well-manicured receptionist stood in alarm at the invasion.

"Is Hope in?"

"She is, but she's not available--"

Anya slid a copy of the search warrant across her desk. "Please stay here, and don't touch anything." A uniform stood beside her as she began to sputter and reach for her phone.

Anya strode down the pastel hallway, with uniforms at her heels. Sparky snaked beside her, teeth bared. He wanted to get the bitch every bit as much as Anya did.

Anya straight-armed the door to Hope's office. Hope was on her feet behind her massive glass desk, her heels sinking into the carpet as she stalked around it to confront Anya. The uniforms fanned out into the room, swarming over the plush white inner sanctum like ants on sugar.

"You've no right to be here." Hope trembled with rage. "Get out."

Sparky stalked toward her, crouched, and growled. His tail lashed, and Hope took a step back.

"We have a warrant to search for certain artifacts missing from a crime scene." Anya held a copy of the warrant in front of her like a shield and tucked the newt transporter behind her. "You are restrained from interfering with the search."

"You can't do that. My lawyer--"

"Sit down and shut up, lady," Anya told her. "We'll at least give you the courtesy of telling you what we take."
Which is more than I can say for Bernie's artifacts. Or his life. Or Leslie's. And Chris's.

Anya circled behind Hope to the bookcases behind her desk. With fingers covered by latex gloves, she pulled books off the shelves, compared the knickknacks to items on the list. She pawed through drawers and Hope's credenza, eyes straying to her papers. She couldn't seize anything she found as evidence unless it directly pointed to a crime. Hope's papers, like the financial records she'd sent, were well-sanitized. There wasn't a single item there over three weeks old.

"Nothing here, Lieutenant," one of the cops said.

Hope smirked.

"We've got the rest of the building to search," Anya told him calmly, though her heart thumped. She stepped out into the hallway, opening doors from east to west: a conference room, a kitchenette, a bathroom, a mop closet. She smelled the faint residue of magick, but it wasn't on this floor.

At the back of the hall was a fire door, but it was locked. The door handle was so cold that her sweaty fingers nearly stuck to the metal. She thought back to what Charon had said about spiritual energy conservation, about how energy had to be pulled away from a source to manifest.

"This is in violation of city fire code," Anya snapped.

Hope and her assistant stood in the hall. "I don't know what happened to the key."

"Open this door, or I'll break it."

Hope shrugged. "My lawyer will have a field day with destruction-of-property claims."

"You can't deny us access to parts of the structure named in the warrant."

"You want for us to break it down?" one of the DPD officers asked.

"Give me a minute."

Anya looked around the hallway for a fire extinguisher, located one in a glass case. The red housing contrasted sorely with Hope's peaches-and-cream color scheme, like an angry zit on a bride's face.

Anya peered at the inspection tag. "Darn, Hope. This thing hasn't been inspected for at least six months. And this is a commercial building. One more fire code violation for you."

"Go fuck yourself."

Anya smirked. The fire extinguisher was a CO
²
canister. Perfect. Anya aimed the hose at the door lock and pulled the trigger. Frigid foam spewed from the nozzle and crackled on the lock. Anya lifted the canister. Wielding it like a hammer, she struck the lockset. It shattered open with a sound like a car door slamming, rattling pieces of metal against the walls. Sparky sniffed a piece of frigid metal and wrinkled his nose at the cold, chemical smell of it.

Anya pushed the door open and clicked on her flashlight. The stink of magick crawled up the stairs, pooling around her ankles like oil. Her breath steamed in the frigid air. As she descended the steps into the basement, she felt as if she were descending underwater. The air was thick with the ozone smell of it, sharp and metallic. Sparky scuttled ahead of her on the rusty steps, which creaked under her weight. Hope's renovation of the building didn't extend to this place: Industrial-green paint peeled from the walls. Jack Frost patterns glistened on the old paint. An overhead light, once located, cast a flickering glow on the basement's contents. Dusty wooden pallets were stacked haphazardly to the ceiling, interspersed with broken pieces of office furniture and paper litter.

It was cold here. Too cold. Anya could see her breath before her as she stepped out onto the concrete floor. The temperature was easily fifty degrees colder down here than upstairs, like walking into a restaurant freezer. Pipes banged overhead, wrapped with insulation to keep them from freezing, but an occasional icicle still poked through.

But she could feel the magick here.

Anya swept the beam of her light to the far corner of the basement, and her heart leaped into her throat. Industrial shelves had been neatly arranged against the walls, heavy with bottles and jars of every description. Her gaze snagged on some items she recognized from Bernie's: a wooden skull, the filigree silver bottle, crystal shards, a sword. Interspersed among them were dozens, hundreds of containers, from old Coca-Cola bottles to mason jars and perfume bottles.

Hope's stash of reliquaries.

Before she touched anything, Anya snapped photos with her camera. She reached out for the nearest bottle, a wine bottle with a cork. The surface was so cold it burned her hand. With a thumb, she popped the cork and held her breath.

A wisp of smoke exited from the bottle and slipped up through the ceiling to the floor above. Anya could hear Hope's wail of anguish filtering down. She peered into the bottle, saw the telltale crystal lining.

She reached for one bottle after another. Her heart lifted as she saw wisps of spirits escaping, the sighs of air breathing out of jam jars and flasks. She smelled old musty air and fresh perfume, a whiff of vodka and the smell of sour pickles. She found and opened children's bottles of bubble bath and pepper shakers. Sparky climbed the shelves and rooted among the vessels, batting at the shreds of spirits as they escaped. The ghosts were going home; she could feel it. The magick was draining out of this place, as if someone had pulled a stopper in a drain.

Tentative footsteps fell on the steps above. "Hey, did you find anything down there?"

Anya smiled in triumph. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. Do me a favor and cuff Ms. Solomon for me."

"Charges?"

"Book her on receiving stolen property, for now." Anya climbed the steps, leaned in the doorway as the uniforms cuffed her. Hope fixed her with a murderous gaze.

"You will regret this," she snarled. Wrath contorted her motherly features.

"We'll see," Anya said mildly. She followed the uniforms taking Hope down to the street. She smiled when she saw the Channel 7 news van parked at the curb and Nick Sarvos speaking before the camera.

"What's the press doing here?" Hope hissed.

"Someone must have tipped them off." Anya shrugged. Inwardly, she beamed.

The uniforms marched Hope out to a waiting squad car. A cop opened the back door, put his hand on the top of Hope's head to keep her from hitting her head on the door frame when she climbed in.

In that instant, Anya saw something spill from the collar of Hope's shirt: the necklace she wore on television, the gold chain that held the tiny glass vial.

She remembered Charon's words:
You'd have to separate her from all her bottles, and she'll fight that to the death.

Remembered them too late.

As soon as the door slammed shut, the squad car burst into a ball of flame.

A
NYA SAT ON THE BACK
of the paramedics' truck, arms wrapped around the newt transporter. Sparky perched on her shoulder, licking a scrape on her temple where a piece of burning debris had struck her. Her clothes smelled like burned gasoline. Despite the ministrations of the paramedics and salamander, Anya was fucking pissed.

Marsh surveyed the scene: a cop car burned down to the ground, with the shell of a news van guttering out. The street was wet with chemical foam, and fire trucks flashed red lights against the sides of the buildings.

"One cop dead. One severely injured." Marsh took her inventory. "One newscaster with burns."

Anya pinched her eyes shut. "Look, it was not my fault that Sarvos was wearing that much hair product. Sparks and aerosol products do not mix." But she still felt bad. If not for her, the reporter would not have been here.

"I suspect he'll be fine, but will be a lifelong customer of Hair Club for Men," Marsh growled. "And your suspect is missing."

Anya groaned. "She was in the backseat when the car blew up."

"She's not anymore. No bones or traces that I can see. Go look for yourself."

Anya slid down to the pavement and limped to the shell of the ruined patrol car. She'd been far enough away from the blast that she'd been thrown mostly clear, which was more than could be said for the DPD uniforms. When she peered into the backseat, all she saw was melted plastic, the bent grille separating the front seat from the back, and the gleam of a metal seat-belt buckle.

Impervious to fire, Sparky wormed his way into the wreckage. He sniffed around the driver's side and pressed a paw on the horn. To his delight, and the consternation of the emergency personnel, the horn gave off a weak, warped trumpet like a goose caught in a lawn mower.