Murder in Misery (Spook Squad) (13 page)

“Leeroy, Gary and Melinda haven’t come across anything useful?” Matt asked trying to start up some kind of conversation.

“Well, they are mainly focusing on their own case load. They have been helping whenever they can or where ever they think they might have some information they will go for it. As of now I can tell you that Melinda is still recovering from the full moon. She was supposed to check out the wolves but now that angle is a bit out of date and pointless. Leeroy has been checking out places in the SD and he isn’t coming up with much. The only thing Gary came up with related to Mason Mills and we have already cleared him. So I’m afraid the spook squad is not going to be much help to you as of right now.”

“At least w
e have a focus now.” Matt shrugged. “If you wouldn’t have pushed for the molds and found out that we needed to look for a leopard then we wouldn’t be passed checking into the local wolves. We might have been stuck. So if anything the SIU has done plenty enough. We just need to nudge the right person to get the right information and then we’ll have the direction we need to head in.”

Keegan bit into her lip in thought. He was right about what they had found. It narrowed down the list of suspects significantly. Bryton’s information didn’t even help and he probably never intended for it to help. More than likely he tipped off the leopards he thought might have something to with the death of Cody and Alice Barr and they were long gone by now.

“They are probably long gone by now.” Keegan mumbled out loud as she rested her forehead against the cool window.

Matt glanced out the corner of his eye at Keegan
. “Who?”

“The monsters that
did this.” Keegan turned to watch him as he pulled into the gravel parking lot. “The names Bryton gave us didn’t end up going anywhere. He probably gave us what people expected him to but really what he was doing the whole time was buying time for the people who did this.”

“Then we g
o and bother him again tomorrow.” Matt pocketed his keys before he opened the car door. “Until then stop thinking about the case Keegan.”

“It’s kind of h
ard to think about anything else at the moment.” Keegan whispered to herself as she followed Matt into the coffee house.

Matt held the door open and nudged her through the entry way with
a hand to the small of her back. “Try?”

“If you’re buying
, I suppose I could.” Keegan grinned as she plopped down and sprawled out in a wide leather chair.

“I guess since you offered me no other choice.” Matt shook his head as she strolled up to the counter and paid for their drinks and two muffins. Keegan was on her feet helping him maneuver back to the chairs before he could manage to drop anything.

They sat in the comfort of the low playing jazz as they sipped on warm drinks. Keegan felt the muscles in her back and shoulders loosen with every sip of hot chocolate. The energy that had been zipping through her veins since their afternoon chase, finally slowed and she could feel exhaustion setting in.

“What you did earlier, with Clay Newton,” Matt’s voice was low and cautious
as he finished the question out. “What was that exactly?”

“I,” Keegan licked her lips trying to find a better way of putting what she actually did. No matter what way a person looked at it, she pushed herself into his mind and took control of him for a few moments to get him to stop. If someone already had problems understanding and accepting what a necromancer was then this would push them further over the edge.
“I manipulated his mind to get him to stop running from us.”

“Do you do that a lot with suspects?” Matt picked at the cardboard holder on his coffee cup.

“I try not to.” Keegan answered honestly and she scrunched her nose up. “I feel guilty about it if I do but we both know he was going to lose us if I didn’t do something. He won’t even remember or know that I did that to him. If anything he will be a bit fuzzy about how we caught up with him.”

“You don’t have anything that says you can’t actually do that to a suspect?” Matt sounded more curious then condescending for the use of her abilities on a suspect.

“The rules that govern the SIU are completely different then the rules you abide by Matt. It’s almost as if we are a separate entity from the police department. We do follow a lot of your rules, there are inalienable rights for every person no matter if they are human or supernatural but we are allowed to use our abilities in order to apprehend a suspect or someone wanted for questioning.” Keegan took a sip of her hot chocolate, “But if I were to use my power to get someone to confess that would jeopardize everything SIU was set up for. I have to think about using my abilities like this, anything I can do can be used against me and the squad in court. It could put a murder back on the streets able to kill again and it can cost all of us in the SIU our jobs. That is why we try to stick to being a human as possible during investigations and while working with suspects.” 

“It doesn’t seem like it’s worth it to be part of SIU if you have to consciously think to not do something that would be so
familiar to you outside of work.” Matt commented as he slid down lower in his seat causing his knees to knock against Keegan’s.

“I don’t really use my abilit
ies that often Matt.” Keegan ignored the warmth that flooded through her chest from such a casual touch. She shook her head clear thinking about what she had just said. She did use her powers more often than she had originally thought. “Well I guess I do.”

“Yeah?” Matt raised a brow in askance.

“It’s hard to explain. Mostly it’s me trying to keep myself aware of what I can do and to keep myself in practice.” Keegan shrugged. “I do a lot of warding for the clubs around here. If they have had trouble with a certain customer I can make it so they won’t ever be able to come back to the club. I am all about keeping the peace and making sure people stay safe no matter what or who they are.”

Matt chuckled.
“I know there’s a heathen somewhere inside of you Keegan. You just kept your self so locked up so tight you are going to go wild one of these days.”

Keegan’s mouth dropped open in shock. The statement from Matt was full of innuendo and it flustered h
er far more than it should have. “’Scuse me?”

“I’m just saying,” Matt held his hands up in surrender, “If you don’t let loose then
when you have the chance to you are going to end up going crazy.”

She grinned at the chance to tease him ba
ck. “Oh, so you are speaking from experience are you?”

He choked on his coffee. He grabbed a napkin and dabbed at the drops that hi
t his pants and wiped his mouth. “I’ll never tell.”

Keegan let out a hearty chuckle. She
missed moments like this; hanging out with a friend and letting things just go for a few minutes just to relax. Everything felt lighter then it had in a long time.

“Thank you for this.
” Keegan rested a hand on his arm. “I really needed this after everything this week at work.”

Mat
t grasped her hand for a moment. “I know.”

Keegan stared into his dark eyes, wanting more then what he was offering at the moment. She felt her entire body pull for it but she brushed the feeling off as best as she could. She ignored the pangs of need for more than a simple touch the entire drive back to her car and home. It took her a few days but she finally understood why she was so upset when Matt disappeared off the face of the earth earlier in the week.
She wanted him and it hurt to see him afraid of who she was. But now? Now the lines were getting blurred and she wasn’t so sure she minded that they were becoming blurred.

The door bell chimed and with in moments her mom was at the door with her reading glasses perched low on her nose. “Keegan? What happened?”

Keegan shook her head as she made her way into the warmth of the house. She passed a brightly lit Christmas tree and wondered if she should even bother getting one this year or just forget about it completely. Ignoring the stray thought she settled her self on a bar stool and watched listlessly as Maria put the kettle on and pulled two mugs out of the cabinet next to the sink.

“I, things are so, ugh,” Keegan rubbed a hand over her eyes. “It’s this case. Everywhere I go leads to another dead end. That’s not everything though. If it was just dead leads I could handle that but it’s the tension between homicide and SIU. They keep treating us so terribly and we’ve just come to accept that as the way we’re going to be treated but then Matt, he never treated us so horribly.”

“Matt?” Maria asked as if she already knew that Matt was someone more important than a fellow cop in a different department.

“Then he apologized. He knew he messed up and he tried to make it better. And he did, do
n’t get me wrong but he…” Keegan blew out a breath of air before she laid her head on the table in frustration.

“He shook you up didn’t he?” Maria smiled at her daughter.

“I mean, I know I’m all emotionally stunted and relationship retarded but guys like him don’t man up from the mistakes they made and then treat people like me so kindly.” Keegan rolled her head so she could look at her mother. “He found out I’m a necromancer. At first he didn’t take that so well either but he came around. Dear god I even think he started flirting with me. How stupid is it that I don’t know what a man flirting with me is like?”

“You a
re not stupid or emotionally stunted or any of those other things Keegan. You guard your heart so fiercely because you don’t want to get hurt but this Matt. He seems to be getting under your skin.”

“I don’t know what to do, Ma.” Keegan watched as her mother prepared a mug of hot chocolate and a cup of tea. She slid the hot chocolate over to Keegan. “We are the two people who keep the departments interconnected and we keep the peace between the two. I don’t want to put that at risk.”

“But do you want to live like me?” Maria cocked a brow and gestured to the empty house and the lonely kitchen. Not even a pet in sight. She did have a wonderfully decorated home for the holidays. It made the house seem infinitely cozier and lived in rather than cold and lonesome. Maybe that was why her mother bothered with the decorations.

“Sometimes listening to your heart isn’t always a bad thing.”

“How do I get it to shut the hell up?” Keegan moaned pitifully. “I mean I’ll listen to my heart about work. That usually works in my favor but now? Everything is nice and stable, back on solid ground. I’m not going to fu- mess that up.”

Maria glared at Keegan for the near slip up of foul language, “But sometimes letting someone in isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world Keegan. And who cares about what happens at work? I’m sure the departments would
still work together even if you and this Matt fellow weren’t there to guide the way for them.”

Keegan huffed out a sigh. It wasn’t like SIU and Homicide were useless without them. They just made things run smoother because they actually got along. They didn’t fake smiles or grudgingly hand over information. Both she and Matt had a common goal in mind and that was the victims came first and all personal issues came last.

“So what do I do?” Keegan mumbled into her hot chocolate.

“This is usually the part that sisters get together and gossip about their love lives.” Maria pointed out cheekily. “Maybe you can call one of yours up and see what they have to say about it?”

Keegan glanced down at her watch and snorted, “Yeah, sure. Let me call Cy up at nine o’clock and tell her, ‘hey I’m having a crisis, care to help?’ Yeah that’ll go over real well Ma. If you recall her and her fiancé David told me I was an abomination. Why would they bother listening to me? I don’t see that happening.”

“What about
Gordon?” Maria suggested, “You two still talk some.”

“Mom,” Keegan stood up. Her heart feeling heavier tha
n it had before she had arrived. “I’m just going to go. Thank you for listening to me ramble on about stupid shit.”

“Keegs,” Maria reached out and grasped her daughter’s wrist. “Sometimes you have to be the better person and reach out to say you’re still my family.”

“Cy, Elsie and Joan, they all did the same thing when I told them. They looked at me like I was a monster. I tried for the longest time. It’s been ten years since I have seen any of them. Three if you count the time Gordon wound up on my doorstep drunk off his butt sobbing about Jaime. When I called her to pick him up she told me his drinking was my fault. The stress of having a freak for a sister was getting to him.” Keegan wrapped her mother in a tight hug. “I will love them to death Ma, but sometimes it is better like this.”

“You know Christmas is coming up. Am I going to have to suffer through another year without you?” Maria pushed trying to reconnect her children.

“You know that Halloween is my night with you.” Keegan shrugged. “I’m not going to steal theirs.”

“Fine, be a stubborn ass,” Maria huffed out as she followed Keegan towards the door. “Love you.”