The night had gone badly from the moment I’d touched down. Filling each other in on what had happened since I left for England and over the past four hours was vital. We needed to figure out was going on and what we collectively and separately knew, but I wasn’t coherent enough right then. Quinton and I put all meaningful discussion on the back burner for the night although neither of us was happy with that. We still had a lot to do.
Quinton dealt with the dog while I moved the ferret’s cage into the bedroom. Not that Grendel is destructive; he’s just dangerously curious. And we both threw a few necessities into bags and packed up anything we might need if we had to bug out. Quinton—living as he did—was better prepared than I was, but I at least needed very little that wasn’t already in the bags I always kept in the back of my truck.
By the time we were done, I barely had the energy to shower. Lucky for me, Quinton was willing to help with the soaping up and so on. He was sweet to me—sweeter than I deserved, perhaps, but I was grateful he was there, as always. As much as I tried to go it alone, I knew I was better with Quinton than without him. We were good together, and not just at the horizontal bop. It was nice to have someone to give up to once in a while, to show your weaknesses and not fear injury. It frightened me a little: Weakness and dependence are dangerous. I worried that he might be hurt by my need, by my relying on him, hurt the way Christelle had been. She’d worked for my dead father and for her loyalty and proximity had come to some still unknown, but probably horrible, end. Thinking of it, I fought an impulse to cry, feeling it in my throat like a lump of clay that even the soothing touch of hot water and soap had difficulty washing away.
We got into bed about one a.m. while Grendel snored outside the bedroom door. Quinton would have liked to do something a bit more athletic than just sleep, but my energy was shot, and we curled together like exhausted puppies. I sank into a dreamless torpor as he pulled me tight against his body. The snowfall-flutter of moths under the streetlamp outside was the last thing I saw as my eyelids closed and the world fell away at last.
Too few hours further into the morning, Detective Rey Solis rang through from the front door until I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I cursed the dogged policeman and his sunrise-loving ways. At this rate, I thought, I might get some decent sleep sometime after Satan opened an ice skating rink.
I’m sure I looked like something that had been extracted from under a thorny bush when I answered my door in dirty jeans, a Noir City Film Festival T-shirt, and bare feet. Grendel the pit bull completed the ensemble, gluing himself to my leg and staring at the detective as if measuring him for a side order of fries.
I glanced at Solis from between puffy eyelids. The man isn’t very tall or very wide, and he looks like he’s made of gouged and pitted leather, but he projects a quiet solidity that gets a lot of suspects talking just to fill the silence and get out from under those unblinking black eyes. I’d have liked to wait him out on principle, but I didn’t have the patience. “Don’t say Rick died.”
“No. Your neighbor is doing well this morning. He requests that you look after his dog.”
I pointed at Grendel. “Got it. And Rick’s all right?”
“Yes. He should be released tomorrow.”
“So what . . . you got demoted?”
“Eh? No.”
“Then, what brings a detective from Homicide to my door if the guy who got shot is fine?”
Solis made a small shrug, his round, impassive face remaining blank while his close-clinging corona of energy flickered yellow and gold. “Courtesy call.”
“Bull.”
“May I come in?”
The living room gave ample evidence that something was up, piled as it was with bug-out bags and Quinton’s electronic and computer gear. I didn’t want Solis to start speculating but I didn’t want to have a conversation about what had gone down the night before while standing in the hallway. I didn’t want him to catch sight of Quinton either, whom he had known as Reggie Lassiter ever since our run-in with a monster on Foster Island. Complex as the situation already was, I wanted to avoid any additional conversational land mines, like . . . “Why are you still hanging out with that guy from the marsh?” or “Seen any monsters lately?” No matter what I did, this was not going to go well. . . .
I made up my mind and stepped back to let him walk past me. “Sorry about the mess. I just got back from a business trip last night and I haven’t put anything away except for shoving stuff the dog might eat into the closet.”
Solis grunted. “Ah. Where had you gone?”
“London.”
The detective looked at the pile of electronic equipment on my dining table. Then he shifted his gaze over the rest of the room. “How long were you there?”
“About five days. A week with the flight time. Why the cross-examination?”
“Only curious.”
“No, you aren’t.”
He shook his head and shrugged. “You are, again, in the center of a most curious circumstance.”
“My neighbor got shot by some thugs. That’s nothing to do with me.”
“They were knocking on your door.”
My turn to shrug. “I wasn’t here. I came in with the first responders.”
“Your . . . roommate—”
“House sitter,” I corrected.
Solis shrugged. “Your house sitter was here. Could this have been connected to him?”
“No.”
“You’re very confident.” I didn’t think he meant that as a compliment. “And where is Mr. Lassiter?”
“At work.”
“Mr. Lassiter is unemployed.”
So Solis was still suspicous about the whole incident and everyone connected to it. He could worry that bone all he wanted; it wouldn’t get him anywhere on this case and the other was no longer his to pry into. There might be hell to pay for it another day, but not today.
I just smiled back at him and went into the kitchen to start some coffee. “You are a nosy bastard, Solis.”
“I am concerned.”
“Why? Probably just some wannabe gangbangers raising Cain. It’s the sort of thing that used to happen all the time around here. And how is a nonfatal shooting in Southwest district the concern of Homicide?” The coffee machine made burbling noises as I turned back around to look at Solis. I leaned on the counter and waited for his reply.
“There is a pattern of crimes recently that have drawn our attention. This incident, though not fatal, fits into that pattern. And there is you.”
“Me? How? I know you seem to think everything weird in Seattle—”
He cut me off. “No. I do not think it. It is a fact. When cases go strange, you are in the thick of it.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee. “That’s a bit much.”
“Do you think so?” He started ticking things off on his fingers. “In the matter of Mark Lupoldi, at the end I find you and his killer—a young man gone completely mad—in a place neither of you should have been. In the matter of the homeless deaths last year, wherever I turn, there you are, and again, it is you who brings the killer to us—just as the case is classified by the government.” The energy around his head and body began to jump and form spikes of frustrated orange and burning yellow as he continued. “There is the matter of the museum that burned down; and the man who assaulted you two years ago; and the business with the sunken ship, and of the poisoned child, and the lost brooch. . . . Oh yes, there is also the disappearance of Edward Kammerling, whom you had gone to see just before this incident last night. Shall I continue?”
“That’s quite a catalog.” I thought about what he’d said and a few of the items took me by surprise: I didn’t know he’d made any connection between me and the museum fire, and what had happened to the guy who’d killed me? He seemed to think I knew, but I’d never followed up on that—I’d been a little busy. But funny that it should come up again since Alice had mentioned him to me in London. I would have to find out. . . .