Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) (14 page)

Sienna paused for a second next to the old Buick in the driveway, leaned against it with a hand on the hood. “You been in this area before?”

“Just passed through,” I said, looking up and down the street. “I don’t have any friends on this street or anything if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Close enough to what I was asking, yeah.” She knocked on the door, which was pitted and scarred like it hadn’t been replaced since the house was built and stood back, waiting for an answer.

We stood there for a minute. “You think he lived alone?” I asked.

“File said he lived with his mother.” She looked at the door intensely, and for a minute I wondered if she could see through it somehow.

“Maybe she’s refusing to answer because she thinks we’re cops,” I said. “You’ve seen that before, right?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I don’t tend to do a ton of investigating in my side of the business.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re mostly dragging people out of bank vaults and beating the hell out of them in restaurants,” I said, going back to that banter thing. She actually smiled on that one, though. “Don’t you have to find these people first, though?”

“Yeah, but I mostly get the dumb ones,” she said. “Big egos, little brains. They’re practically defying authority in an effort to get caught. It’s like they’ve got daddy issues with law enforcement. Catch me if you can, and all that.”

“Wouldn’t it be ‘mommy issues’ if you’re dealing with it?”

She shrugged. “Whatever the case, it’s pretty straightforward. I’m not exactly a highly experienced investigator.” She hesitated for a second, looking a little reticent. “But, whatever, we’ll make it work.”

I stared at her. “Did you just … did you just kind of, like … bluster your way through that?”

She looked a little wounded. “I didn’t … I mean … I’m just saying that I’m not a detective by trade, okay? It’s a weakness, but, y’know, it’s something we can work around. It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re after a murder suspect, aren’t you?” I asked. “Shouldn’t that be a big deal?”

“I didn’t mean to say that the murders aren’t a big deal,” she said, slowing down her speech, “I mean … we’ll figure it out and catch who’s responsible. It’s all good practice for me.”

“So you’re not exactly Sherlock Holmes is what you’re saying.” I leaned forward and pounded on the door. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“Well, if lightning man peeks his ugly face out at us, you’ll find me reassuring as I beat the living daylights out of him.”

“Does anyone actually use the phrase ‘the living daylights’ anymore?”

She stared at me with a thin veneer of annoyance. “You’re really leaning on this banter thing. Nervous?”

“I’m knocking on the door of a total stranger whose kid just got murdered by lightning,” I said. “It’s totally cool. I do this every week or so. It’s not unusual or uncomfortable at all.”

Her gaze softened. “Just stick with me,” she said, and pounded the door with her fist again, this time with extra emphasis.

“How do you know anyone’s even here?” I asked.

“Car’s in the drive,” she said. “Hood’s still cooling off, which means it was parked recently. Someone’s here.”

I let out a little whistle. “You’re getting the hang of this investigating thing, I think. What do you want to do?”

“I’ll go around back and knock there,” she said. “You stay here.”

I got the feeling from the way she said it that there was more in her mind than she was letting on. “You’re not about to force entry, are you? Because like I told that cop last night, I got a clean record, and I need to keep it that way—”

“I’m not going to break down the door,” she said. “Just want the person inside to feel a little surrounded. Plus, if they haven’t closed their curtains, they’re going to feel stupid if I walk around back and catch them standing there pretending they’re not home.”

“What if they’re in their underwear?” I asked. She gawked at me. “People do that, you know, when they’re at home. They could be in the bathroom—”

“Just stand here,” she said and started off across the overgrown lawn, disappearing around the back.

I just sort of stood there on the front porch, not really sure what I should do. There was a little peephole, and I looked at it for a minute before I decided to lean in and take a look.

I saw an eyeball looking back at me.

I let out a short, sharp “Ahhh!” and heard one coming from the other side of the door, maybe a little higher than mine. I stepped back and heard the deadbolt slide, then the door unlocked and a short woman with a scowl who looked like she came up to about my belly button was staring up at me, grey hair all done up in a bun.

“What do you want?” she asked, hand against her chest. “You just about gave me a heart attack!”

“Uhm,” I said, tongue twisting around, “I’m, uh … Augustus.”

She peered at me through her thick glasses. “Augustus who? That doesn’t tell me anything. What do you want?”

“I’m here about, uh … Kennith?”

“You asking or you telling me that?” She took her hand off her chest.

“I’m here about Kennith,” I said. “I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“Who are you with?” That scowl made me want to take another step back.

“I’m with, uh …” I tried to remember the mouthful of jargon that Sienna’s agency was called. “The, uh … metahuman police.”

She gave me a look. “The who what?”

“The agency responsible for policing metahumans,” Sienna answered for me as she came around the corner, floating through the air. “Ms. Coy?”

“
Mrs
. Coy,” the lady answered, staring furiously at her, like her floating was nothing. “And don’t you make any jokes about it, either.”

“Oh, coy, like—” I started then stopped myself. “Well, you did refuse to answer the door for a while, so … maybe you shouldn’t play it so—”

She raised a hand like she was going to hit me, and I stopped and took a step back. “I am your elder and you will respect me,” she said. “If your mother didn’t teach it to you, come a little closer and I will.”

“Ma’am,” Sienna said as she landed on the front porch, “we’re here about Kennith.”

“I heard him the first time he said it,” Mrs. Coy said, staring her down. “What do you need to say about him?”

Sienna gave me a look, something in the realm of
This lady is going to be a pain in the ass
. “We’re here about what happened to him.”

“You mean how he died?” she asked, getting right to it. Even Sienna looked a little taken aback by her bluntness on that one.

“Uhh … yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”

“Well, then why didn’t you just say that?”

“It’s kind of a delicate thing,” Sienna said. “I didn’t want to just throw it out there in case no one had told you …”

Mrs. Coy’s head dropped. “You didn’t think I’d notice my boy got struck by a bolt of lightning outside my own window?” She yanked the glasses off her head and thrust them out at each of us in turn. “How blind do you think I am that something like that would escape my notice?” She turned her head, showing us each of her ears in turn. “Do you see hearing aids here? Do you think I would miss the crack of thunder?”

“Was there a crack of thunder?” Sienna asked, and for a minute I thought Mrs. Coy was going to lunge right out at her.

“Of course there was a crack of—” Mrs. Coy’s face got screwed up for a minute, and then she paused, like she was thinking about it. “Well, there had to be, didn’t there? Of course there was. Thunder follows lightning, that’s how it is.”

“Thunder follows lightning because the air currents make that noise as the electricity is discharged from clouds or something, right?” I asked Sienna. She just sort of shrugged and nodded, all in one. “So if he was killed by someone who could shoot lightning out of their hand, there wouldn’t be thunder, would there?”

“What in the blue hell are you talking about?” Mrs. Coy asked.

“Ma’am,” Sienna said gently, which sounded a little strange on her, “we think Kennith was killed by a metahuman who generates lightning bolts from their hands.” She lowered her voice even further, almost to a whisper. “We think he was murdered.”

Mrs. Coy put her glasses back on and squinted at us, smacking her lips together like she was thinking something over real hard. “You think he was murdered?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sienna said.

“By a bolt of lightning?”

Sienna looked to me again, and this time I could see the pained need for reassurance pass across her face in a flash quicker than the lightning we were discussing. I got it, because Mrs. Coy had one of those personalities like those clouds that make thunder—she made everyone want to wince and take a step back. “Yes, ma’am. We think so. We’d like to ask you some questions about Kennith because … we’re trying to track down the person we think did this.”

Mrs. Coy screwed up her face again, and then pushed her door wide open. “You can come in, then.” And she backed away from the door slowly, shoulders hunched over, looking for the first time not like a force of nature hurling herself at us at the gates to her own castle but like a woman—an older woman—who had lost her son.

Mrs. Coy’s house smelled of good food. We followed her down the hall into a living room that looked well-lived in, older furniture that had a stately aura about it—classy and aged well, kind of like the woman herself. The outside of the house might have been a little rough, but the inside was the domain of this tiny terror, and she clearly kept it completely in line, like her own personal kingdom.

“Y’all want anything to eat?” Mrs. Coy asked. “People from the church brought all manner of food.”

“I just ate,” I said apologetically. I watched Augustus catch her eye and shake his head.

“I can’t hear your head rattle,” Mrs. Coy said, eyeing him.

“Ah, no, ma’am, thank you,” Augustus said, tripping over his words. I couldn’t blame him; she had that effect on me, too.

“Would you like some iced tea?” she asked, passing through a small gap between counter and wall into a kitchen on the far side of the room.

“Uh, sure,” I said. “Please.”

“Yes, please,” Augustus said.

She moved about the kitchen for a few minutes, preparing three big pint glasses of tea with ice. I watched her go about the business, slowly, steadily, until she’d finished pouring all three of them. When she got done, she sort of stared at them for a moment and I could see her conscious mind clicking away realizing what she’d just done, and how she didn’t have enough hands to effectively carry all of them. “You,” she said to Augustus, “come help me with these.”

Augustus snapped to it, nice guy that he was, and he grabbed two glasses and hurried them over to us while Mrs. Coy took the third for herself and settled in on one side of her couch, taking up maybe three-quarters of a plaid-ish cushion. She held the iced tea glass in her hand, and I watched it start to sweat. It wasn’t exactly sweltering in her house, but it was warm, and she was wearing only a thin cotton dress.

Augustus handed me a glass and I took it up, immediately taking a long drink. When the tea hit my lips, I froze. It was like no tea I’d ever had. I’d gotten used to the British version of tea. This was not that. This was diabetes encased in a glass cylinder.

It was sugared like a soft drink, with a hint of honey running throughout. I tried not to slurp, because even as my brain was protesting that this was way, way too sweet for me, my tongue was asking me for more and more. Also, in fairness, it was kind of warm, so a cold drink felt pretty good.

“What do you think happened to my Kennith?” Mrs. Coy asked as I pulled the glass away from my face. I didn’t really want to pull it away, but I needed to stop before I drowned myself in this stuff.

“Ma’am, we don’t exactly know,” Augustus answered for me while I composed myself. He gave me a sidelong look like he knew the tea had captured me and was holding me prisoner. The secret ingredient may have been heroin, because all I wanted at that moment was MOAR TEA.

“Another man was killed the same night,” I said, finding my voice again. “Roscoe Marion. Does that name sound familiar?”

Her eyelids fluttered as she thought it over. “I read his name in the paper, but … other than that, no. I don’t think so. I don’t recall Kennith or anyone else ever mentioning him to me before.”

“How was Kennith doing?” I asked. “I know he was on … probation.”

“He was following the rules,” she said. “He worked at the tire shop down the road. He didn’t go out at night, just went to work and came home straightaway afterward. His parole officer came by a couple times a week at first, but we hadn’t seen him in a while now.” She shook her head. “I don’t see how he could have been in any trouble, let alone enough for someone to want to kill him.”

I made a mental note about the tire shop. “Did he ever have friends come by?”

She looked up at me. “Just that Darrick. He would stop by every once in a while. I never did like him.”

“What was wrong with him?” Augustus asked.

“He had no respect,” Mrs. Coy said, and she was off to the races again, animated and irritated. “He would honk his horn on the driveway until Kennith came out and talked to him, like an animal. No manners.”

“What was Darrick’s last name?” I asked.

“Cary,” she said. “Darrick Cary. I’ll write it down for you so you can beat on his door for a while.” She puckered her lips and gave me enough of a look that told me what she thought about my tactics.

Augustus’s lips went into a thin line. “Darrick Cary … young guy. About yea tall?” He held up a hand to around his chin. “Drives a little SUV?”

“He’s in a fancy Corvette now, but that’s him,” Mrs. Coy said, looking at Augustus with more than a little mild irritation. “He a friend of yours?”

“No,” Augustus said, looking more than a little offended. “We went to school together is all. I know of him.”

“Can we talk about the night Kennith was killed?” I asked.

“I don’t see anyone stopping you,” Mrs. Coy said, just a little short of a snap.

“What can you tell us about that night?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see,” Mrs. Coy said, with more than a little irony dripping, “it was the night before last, so it might take me a while to remember since it was so long ago. How do these stories normally start? ‘It was a dark and stormy night’? Yeah, it started like that.” She was clearly annoyed at us. “Kennith and I were sitting on the couch watching TV—”