Silent Doll (25 page)

“That wasn’t your original question, but I’ll play along—we’ve got two perfectly good dumpsters here.”

I looked between the two giant green dumpsters, only briefly scanning the body again, until I came to focus on the tech standing by his open kit.

“Hey Potato Bob, glove me.”

Both Hamilton and the tech looked at me blankly. From the corner of my eye, I caught Ro’s gesture: she stuck up her hand and snapped the latex glove. See, there was a woman who got me. The tech guy pulled gloves out of the kit and brought them over to us.

“Y’know, my name’s Brian,” he said gruffly, thrusting the box at me.

“Of course it is, sweetie,” I said, pulling out a pair of gloves, “but I got one of those pesky senses of humor.”

He waited for Hamilton to remove a pair of gloves before stomping back to his kit. Hamilton jabbed me with his elbow.

“How to lose friends and alienate people…Potato Bob?”

“She’s got some bizarre fantasy that our suits make us look like baked potatoes at a barbeque,” Ro called.

“It’s not a fantasy, y’all are right here.”

“Did you just say y’all?”

“I thought I’d channel some of that good old country home charm.”

“Shame it’s the wrong country and it’s not your home.” He started toward the dumpster on the left.

“Spoil my fun,” I muttered under my breath and went for the one on the right. Throwing back the lid, I was smacked in the face by the smell of stale food and liquor.

“Oh, yuck. Don’t we have people to do this?”

“You’re not counting yourself as a person now?” Hamilton said, pushing aside the first layer of bin bags.

“I mean other people, grunts, interns, lackeys, peons…take your pick.”

Hamilton chuckled. “You’re not squeamish over a little dumpster juice—stop being such a girl.”

“Hey, my objection has nothing to do with my gender, more my sense of smell.” I wafted my hand in the air, trying to clear some of the offending odor away. “What do you mean, a
little
dumpster juice? I’m looking at soup here.”

“I wouldn’t panic. If it’s in here it’ll be close to the top. I doubt our suspects liked the idea of diving through this muck any more than you do.”

That was of little comfort as I pulled back a black mass of plastic to reveal a dead rat. I was instantly embarrassed by the girly squeal I gave at the sight, but I still did the grossed out girl dance for about twenty seconds.

Hamilton walked over to my side, peering over the green rim to see what had spooked me.

“Dead rat? The owner must dust the bins with vermin poison. Good thing this area isn’t popular with tramps.”

“We don’t get that many tramps, full stop, because things eat them.”

Hamilton shook his head with reluctant amusement. He said, “The city draws and hides so much.”

I stared at him. That was quite a profound but accurate statement. Our pretty little city, on this side at least, was so steeped in magic—and the resulting hotspots—that it drew all sorts of beings here, but the abundance of magic also hid individuals behind a kind of smoke screen. I wondered if that had been part of the reason my mother had come here. If you wanted to blend in, pretend to be something else, this was the place to do it. If you hid amongst the wolves, vampires, elves, dwarves and witches, it’d be like a supernatural where’s Wally.

“So, no purse?” Hamilton asked drawing me back from my thoughts.

“Not in the dumpster, but we haven’t looked under it.”

He nodded. “I’ll get some extra muscle,” he said, turning away from me. I put my foot against the green polyurethane, not wanting to touch it with my hands again—gloves or no gloves—and shoved. The dumpster rolled about five feet, and the grinding of the wheels on the concrete made Hamilton turn. He looked between me and the moved dumpster quizzically.

“They roll real easy, full or not,” I said with a shrug, and pointed to what I’d revealed; lying in a dry patch under the dumpster was a mobile phone. It was slim and the screen had cracked in one corner.

“You want to get a photo of this?”

The tech with the camera dutifully trotted over, snapped shots from a couple of different angles and gave me a curt nod to let me know he was done. I bent, picking it up gingerly. The screen flashed on. Hamilton gave a grunt of annoyance.

“I didn’t touch anything,” I said, examining what was on the screen. “Looks like she was in the middle of a text. Plans cancelled. Show not on. Be home soon. Could have been to her mom.”

“Is there a number for her in there?”

I cancelled the text and scanned through the phone book until I came to a number marked “home”. I read the number off to Hamilton, who jotted it down. He walked away from me to make a call I didn’t envy. I took the phone in my hands and went to sit on the lip of the crime scene van. The battery only had a half life left, but the screen kept fading in and out because of the damage. The shot on her background was a candid of a man sleepily shoving cereal into his mouth, his eyes turned to see the camera just as the picture was taken. It was an image of good humor, something they’d probably laughed at later. It was her text message, though, that made me start to search through her phone, looking for a calendar app.

Hamilton came around the back of the truck, shaking his head and sliding his thumb across the screen to lock his cell phone.

“I hate having to make these calls. They’re going to come down to the station to view the body. Doctor Soltaire’s going to want her van back.” I looked up from the phone and turned it so he saw the screen. Today’s calendar entry read—
Le Circe De Poupee
, 8:00 p.m. He blinked at it.

“Think we have enough for you to get a warrant now?”

He nodded. I reached behind me to grab an evidence bag and put the phone into it. I left it sitting on the van floor behind me.

“If I call around until I find the right judge. It’s Judge Heckerman’s poker night.”

“Who does he play with? Other judges?”

“Ex-cops and small time ex-cons mostly, but the game changes venues a lot.”

I jumped up from the tailgate and began to walk with him. “Then you’d better get back to base and start phoning around.”

“Yup. Want me to drop you off somewhere?”

“Yeah, if you…” I was cut off by the sound of my name being called. I turned to see Ro beckoning me. “Hold that thought, I’ll be right back.”

I did a quick dart over to where Ro was standing her hands on her hips.

“What’s up, doc?” I smirked a little at my unintentional funny. Her brow creased.

“I didn’t want you to go running off without me talking to you. I found something in those chocolates. It wasn’t subtle, it was kind of a bluish gunk, you’d see it, but probably not until you’d already taken a bite. Point is, it was in every one of them, like whoever left them for you wanted to make sure you got dosed.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. I left it in the mass spectrometer because the call came in. The results should be ready by the time I get back.” I looked back at Hamilton, who was watching us, his arm resting on top of the open car door.

“So, I don’t want to go home?”

“Not just yet. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t sleep well until I knew what that stuff was.”

I nodded—that was definitely something we agreed on.

She took my nod for compliance. “Go back to my lab and wait for me.”

I nodded again, turning to leave her.

“Oh, and, Cassandra,” she said, making me turn back to her. “Don’t touch anything.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hamilton gave me a ride back to the station while I called my place to check on my house guests. Incarra, smart girl that she was, didn’t answer my phone until she heard my voice on the answer machine.

“Pinocchio’s girlfriend is all upset. What’s going on?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Don’t call her that, her name is Trinket.”

“Weirdest name I’ve ever heard.”

“From the girl who chose to be called Incarra.”

She grumbled. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Another call came in. I just got done at the scene, I’m heading back to wait for some results at the lab.”

“Dude, you so just sounded like an episode of CSI.”

I grinned. “I need you to sit tight and keep an eye on her. Don’t answer the bell, the door or anything.”

“Want me to turn out the lights and make like nobody’s home?”

I thought about that for a minute. Technically, Trinket and Incarra weren’t supposed to be there and I was out.

“Yeah, good idea. There are some candles under the sink in the bathroom.”

I heard her pass on the instructions to Trinket.

“When will you be back?”

“An hour, maybe two. I don’t think any longer than that.”

“What am I going to do with her in the dark for two hours?”

I let out an exasperated sigh.

“I have
Crouching Tiger
on DVD. Watch the subtitles, or you could tell ghost stories and braid each other’s hair.” I heard her cursing and a shout of surprise. “Incarra?”

“Speaking of hair, Barbie just set hers on fire. I got to go.” She hung up.

I shook my head. I was never having kids. Hamilton had listened to my side of the conversation with relative good cheer.

“You have someone watching her? Your ghost-seeing friend?”

“Yeah. She seems to resent being stuck on babysitting duty.”

“She’d much rather be out here helping you?” he asked.

“Yes. But it’s too dangerous for her. She doesn’t have an active power, she’s your average breakable human.”

“So are you.”

I was about to correct him but I stopped myself just in time. I wasn’t prepared to let the cat out of the bag tonight.

“I can defend myself. I have magic. What she does is more a psychic ability. It’s all done in her head.”

“How is it you know so much?”

“I read a lot.”

“And it just stays in your head?”

“Depends on how long ago I read it. I can usually remember the article and who it’s by if I can’t recall the contents.”

“How come with a mind like that you didn’t become a cop?”

I grinned at him. “I’d rather be recognized as brilliant now then wait and wade through the ranks.”

Hamilton gave a short sharp bark of laughter and managed to wrestle it down to a chortle. I was beginning to enjoy the way things were going, this easy camaraderie that was building between us. He let me out at the main doors of the station, then took the car to his designated parking spot, somewhere around the other side.

As I went down the stairs, I had to wonder why Rourke hadn’t been up our ass the minute the call had come in. I made a quick stop at the doors to PCU to peer in through the glass. They seemed to be clearing up. I saw LeBron tidying up the pens in a mug. I waited until he looked up, then waved. He motioned for me to wait a minute, then came out into the corridor. Close up, I saw a yellowing bruise on his neck.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I said. “You okay? What’s going on?”

He blinked quizzically. I pointed to the bruise. He clapped his hand to it as though he’d forgotten it was there.

“Yes, things are fine,” he said. “I’ll expand on that in a minute. As for what’s going on, surprise departmental inspection slash audit. Whatever you’re up to, you’ll be free from Rourke for at least the rest of the night.”

He wrapped his fingers gently around my arm and led me down the corridor, away from the doors.

“I got into a bit of a scrap with another wolf on the last night of the moon.”

“What? Simian promised me he’d look after you.”

LeBron got a grumpy face. “Yeah, thanks for that, mom. I thought you’d said something like that to him, and I didn’t like it. I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself.”

I pointed emphatically to the bruise on his throat.

“Obviously that’s not the case.”

“I didn’t get the bruise in the fight.” He laughed and his cheeks flushed. “Brie gave me that, it’s sort of a were-animal hickey.”

“Okay, I’m not sure I want to know any more.”

“It’s not…like that…we weren’t,” he stuttered, scarlet lighting under the bruise. “Her ex got pissy at her spending time with me, so he started a scrap. I won and, well, I guess it was my reward.”

“The kitty bit you?”

“Yeah,” he murmured. I wanted to tease him but I didn’t want to rush of blood to make his head explode.

“I could tell she was taken by you that first night.”

He smiled. “I like her too; she’s really sweet and funny. Speaking of liking people, I heard you went on a date with DJ?”

I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Simian set us up. It wasn’t a date, it was a trick. He won’t get it out of his head that I just need to settle down with a nice wolf—have puppies.”