The Love-Haight Case Files (12 page)

“His brother?”

“Brother-in-law actually. Sly Redmond, who was doing a favor for someone else.”

Evelyn let out a breath that teased the curls against her forehead.

“The favor came down a long chain, but at the end of it is a business man, maybe untouchable. Franklin Arnold … a man with two first names.”

“Dear God.”

“So you know who he is?”

“He owns some things in the city, buildings, a corporation or two, might even own some local politicians.” Evelyn clutched the glass tightly. “He bought the building next door. He’s keeping it vacant because he needs this one too for his plans. Wants to put up luxury condominiums.”

They drank the first glass of wine and Dagger poured them each a second.

“I can’t believe Thomas was killed over this building.”

Dagger poured himself a third glass, finishing the bottle. Evelyn felt a little light-headed from the wine, but it looked like Dagger was wholly unaffected.

“I think Thomas was killed for a lot of reasons,” Dagger said. “This Arnold fellow, I did a little sniffing. He also owns the building Brock, Davis & Davis nests in.”

“That’s the law firm of Thomas’s father. One of the biggest in the city.”

“Arnold is buddy-buddy with Brock and the senior Davis, and he’s on record against OTs.”

“Thomas’s father—”

“Doesn’t like OTs either, I know,” Dagger said. “But I doubt very much he’d have his own son iced.”

“But Arnold …”

“Yeah, Arnold was the one that called for the hit on Thomas.”

“Can you prove it?”

“From a comment made by a frightened ganger behind a nudie bar? No.” Dagger took a long swallow of wine. “I can’t prove it. Not yet.” He rubbed at the stained spot of Formica once more, and then fixed Evelyn with a frightening glare. “There was a second target Thursday night. The fey was supposed to get Thomas … and you, probably Gretchen for good measure if she’d been there too.”

Evelyn nearly tipped her glass over. “Me, but I—”

He upended the last of his Shiraz, stood, and brushed his palms against his jeans.

Evelyn felt the color drain from her face.

Dagger walked to the door. “Watch your back, Evey. Then when you get that precious degree, get the hell out of San Francisco. Pick another city to take the bar exam in.” He closed the door behind him and tromped down the stairs.

“Like hell,” Evelyn said, staring at the empty wine bottle. “Like hell. I’m going to get my degree and keep
this
law office open. I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter 1.17

Thomas floated above the spot where he’d died.

He wanted to feel something. He did—remorse, loss, anger, uncertainty, terror over his condition, and even a touch of joy to know that there was something beyond death. But he wanted to feel
something.
When he was out on the street earlier in the day he hadn’t felt the drizzle of rain that passed through him, couldn’t feel the roughness of the sidewalk or the sharp edges of his building. He couldn’t feel the sun after the clouds went away, or the wind that he could tell was blowing. Crumpled up wrappers scudded along the curb in the breeze.

He couldn’t feel the temperature—nothing was hot or cold, and he hadn’t been able to touch his sister’s face when he’d showed his ghostly self and she started crying. He’d wanted desperately to wipe away her tears.

But more than that, he’d wanted to touch Evelyn when she’d returned late tonight and stood on the corner, looking at the dark office. He’d hovered behind her, unseen, insubstantial fingers reaching out and disappearing inside the pack strapped to her back.

He felt nothing.

Evelyn said she believed in heaven.

Thomas wondered if this was some sort of hell.

And, if his ephemeral existence here was only temporary, he wanted to know what would cause him to move on. What was his unfinished business?

There was much he had wanted to do with his life, professionally and personally. All of his plans were unfinished business in some sense, but somehow he knew deep inside that one must be the key. He needed to know what that key was, so he could unlock that mysterious door to whatever came next at a time of his choosing. That way everything he had wouldn’t be yanked away from him without warning, like it had been on the night he was murdered.

Hard to know the future, though.

Still, he couldn’t help feeling there was some clue he was missing, something or someone who might tell him what came next.

O O O

Nika Rondik put down the main section of the most recent edition of
The San Francisco Chronicle
and sighed as she pushed up from the dinette table to fix herself a second cup of tea. The story about Thomas Brock’s grisly murder was more than depressing; it was physically enervating, especially since it was all so … unnecessary.

Damn receptionist, probably never even told Thomas she had called.

The whole world knows that magic exists, that supernatural creatures roam the earth. But claim to be a psychic and no one believes anything you say.

Not even when it is a matter of life and undeath.

She had another vision about the young lawyer during the night, but there was no sense calling again. The man was dead, the police always skeptical.

Besides, all she saw this time was green-veined granite. The poor fellow’s headstone, no doubt, his epitaph writ in stone.

How could that possibly help solve his murder?

***

Case # 2 Writ in Stone

Chapter 2.1

“I did not have a useless life, Evelyn Love.” The gargoyle was one of the more grotesque-looking ones in the city. He had the face of a demon and a body that resembled a scaly ape. Pete, the gargoyle that guarded the building where she worked and lived, was downright cuddly compared to this rock. But just because he was a scary-looking, sentient stone carving, didn’t mean Thurman didn’t have feelings, too, just like anyone else, human or paranormal.

Evelyn rested her hand on Thurman’s shoulder, the green-veined granite smooth from the decades of rain and wind and feeling cool against her palm. She looked over the building edge, ten stories up from the street. “I couldn’t get an injunction and—”

“You have been most kind,” Thurman said.

She held the small recorder in front of his expressionless face, her fingers trembling and her stomach twisting. Evelyn felt in part responsible; if she’d been victorious in court she wouldn’t be recording his last words. The two of them might be celebrating with a good micro-brew.

“My last words?” The gargoyle twisted his head, the sound grating like stone against stone and setting her teeth to ache. “I thought an earthquake would be the end of me, lightning, or some other act of God that I’d grown too weak to stand against. That is what we do—fortify the structures we choose as our homes. Our presence protects and strengthens buildings, and I struggled very hard to keep this one intact. I did not have a useless life. I coaxed the stone around me to rail against the big earthquake in 1906, and all the smaller ones that came in the decades after. That is our purpose, Evelyn, to give our magic to the building we’re attached to. Keep it safe, the people inside safe. It is why we exist.” He pointed to a building directly across the street. “From the fires that followed in 1906 … that will be the only survivor from this neighborhood. And all that remains original there is the sandstone façade.” He sighed, the sound like the surf hushing in. “I watched them rebuild that one. Albert Pissis, the architect, he kept the façade for posterity, designed the department store behind it. I listened to him, directing the workers. He quoted someone named Rizal, and it stuck with me. ‘It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice.’ I did not have a useless life.”

A tear slid down Evelyn’s cheek. She pulled in a breath and glanced down at the small crowd beyond the crane on Market Street. Ten stories up, she couldn’t read the signs some of them carried. Police kept them back for safety. Christmas decorations hung in some of the windows, lighted wreaths from lampposts, the cheery appearance seeming incongruous to her.

There were sawhorse barricades on both ends of the block, and she knew they would remain throughout the week, no doubt pissing off the neighboring merchants who would have a slow-down in business.

“Time’s up!” came from a policeman down below, a bullhorn against his face. “Come down, Ms. Love.”

She turned off the recorder. “I have to go.”

“Save my brothers, Evelyn Love. Save your Pete.”

Evelyn sucked in a breath. Pete wasn’t here. Like all gargoyles, he was bound to the building he protected; in this case her law office building. The man who’d won the right to tear down this building was also trying to buy the building the law office was housed in, no doubt so he could have the sick pleasure of ramming a wrecking ball against Pete.

She took the stairs. The power had been shut off yesterday, and the furniture long ago moved out, leaving only the bones of the place. Her footsteps echoed eerily through the hallways.

Out on the street the sounds came at her in a chaotic symphony: the crane motor ratcheting, demolition contractors shouting to be heard over it, the crowd beyond chanting.

“Save the stone. Save the stone,” came from one part of the gathering.

“Rock him! Sock him!” from the other side.

The group had grown in the span of a handful of minutes; Evelyn put it at ninety or a hundred now. Some were simply curious passersby out shopping. Others, most all of them human, protested the demolition, but their numbers included a ghoul in an overlarge trench coat pressing close to the barricade and a pair of green-faced hags in designer jeans. Like death penalty objectors outside a prison during an execution, the OT sympathizers had come to argue for saving the building … and thereby saving the gargoyle attached to the very top of it.

ARNOLD IS A MURDERER

SAVE THE STONE

GARGOYLES DESERVE LIFE

BURY ARNOLD!

STOP THE HATE

PEACE NOT PIECES

OTS HAVE RIGHTS TOO!

But the Other Than Humans didn’t have many rights, Evelyn thought, looking at that particular sign. And according to the California courts, gargoyles had none. She’d worked diligently to save this building, at the end trying as a last resort to get an injunction to buy her more time. The judge had offered a compromise, chisel the gargoyle loose from the building, then have the crew tear the place down. But the gargoyle’s life force was tied to the building. Cut him free, he died. Destroy the building, he died. It was the same for all the gargoyles in the city, maybe for gargoyles everywhere.

“OT slayer!” a red-faced man shouted, pumping his fist.

“Murderer!” became a chant, and Evelyn barely stopped herself from joining in.

A police officer waved her behind the barricade.

The crane had a wrecking ball attached, the vehicle a monstrosity she imagined turning into a robot in a Michael Bay film—she wished it would, fly away to its base on the moon so she’d have more days to work with. A bulldozer sat near it, as well as a massive tractor equipped with metal claws, and a large dump truck.

Evelyn wondered if the gargoyle would feel much pain. That had been part of her argument, the fact that gargoyles “felt,” that they had sensations similar to a human. She argued that tearing down the building was tantamount to murder.

“It’s just a rock,” the opposing counsel told her. And in the end the judge had agreed.

She looked up, seeing Thurman only as a stony protrusion, the details lost in the distance and the glare of the midmorning sun.

A bullhorn crackled, and she missed the first bit of the speech amid the chanting of the crowd.

“—on this spot a modern office complex will reach to the sky!” Franklin Arnold had a face that reminded Evelyn of a horse, stretched and with a narrow, curved nose, and topped with a graying mane too long to be stylish. He wasn’t handsome, but he tried to make himself look so, wearing expensive suits like fashion moguls strutted in. She detested Arnold, her hate palpable. She’d learned that he was behind the “hit” that ended Thomas Brock’s life. But they couldn’t prove it … at least not right now.
A horse’s face,
she thought.
No, Arnold was a horse’s ass.

“Twenty-five stories high, and with stores and restaurants on the lower three levels.”

“We don’t need more stores!” This came from a protestor with a megaphone. “Save the gargoyle!”

“The gargoyle will be pebbles!” Arnold shouted back. “Today there will be one less OT in my city!” He said more, but the crowd raged.

The blood pounded in Evelyn’s temples and she felt smothered, wedged in by the people around her, all shouting and gesturing, holding their signs higher. The noise was a crashing wave threatening to drown her, and the scent of their warring colognes made her gag.

A construction worker helped Arnold up into the cab of the wrecker. Arnold grinned, caught sight of Evelyn and waved to her, then flipped a finger at the building he’d bought and had gone through all the long and proper legal channels to have torn down. He hoisted himself into the seat, and Evelyn watched him work the controls; he obviously didn’t need to be schooled in the crane’s operation. She knew he’d bought and demolished a handful of other buildings in the city in the past few years, probably had thrown out that “ceremonial first pitch” with bringing them down, too.

The machine rumbled and the boom swung, the ball arcing up and smashing midway against the ninth and tenth floors. Now the noise became wholly unbearable—the protestors, Arnold’s supporters mixed in, the crane and the wrecking ball, and the tractor starting up. She squeezed deeper into the gathering until she felt her back touch the building behind her. She inched along it until she reached the corner, and then she pried herself out of the mass, which was becoming larger and more agitated with each swing of the ball. She waited for the light, crossed the street, and found a vantage point farther away. And yet it was still too close; she saw the ball hit the building again and again, the sound excruciating and something she expected to remember forever. Thurman, the stony protrusion that had been the Jose Rizal-quoting gargoyle was gone.

The protestors surged forward, barreling past the police. Punches were thrown, and Evelyn backed still farther away. Twin sickly spirals of green-gray smoke rose; she guessed it was tear gas. All she could smell was stone dust—the gargoyle’s last exhaled breath. She barely heard the sirens as more police arrived, taking the worst offenders with them, finally scattering the bulk of the troublemakers, including a gossamer-winged fey that looked delicately beautiful.

“He’s dead,” one of the human protestors said flatly as he walked past Evelyn, dragging his sign. It was the one that read: OTS HAVE RIGHTS TOO! “The gargoyle’s gravel now,” he told his companion, a thin woman with a pink hair spikes.

“The gargoyle’s name was Thurman,” Evelyn said too softly for them to hear. “A Norwegian name. It meant ‘protected.’”

Evelyn stood there for another two hours, her legs cramping. She’d done her homework on demolition. The building had been a hundred and twenty feet tall; the other structures too close around it for Arnold to use explosives. She suspected he preferred knocking it down with a wrecking ball anyway. It would be like a man killing another with a club—more visceral and personal.

Arnold was indeed an OT-hating horse’s ass. No, Evelyn corrected herself. Calling him that would be too generous.

She watched the wrecking ball continue its grisly work for a little while longer, someone else at the controls; she’d seen Arnold driven away in a limousine a while ago. It would take at least two days to turn it all into rubble. Demolition crews always started with the top, and as the girders began to show, men would come in to unbolt the steel so that it could be pulled apart. The tractor with the claws grabbed at sections and pulled them away. The dozer was for moving the larger chunks. It would probably take another two or three days to cart off all the debris, and then another day for grading to make the spot ready for the new construction.

Evelyn shuddered, a Paul Simon song coming unbidden in her head, one he’d recorded in 1965: “I Am a Rock.” Evelyn favored old music. Too bad Simon hadn’t gotten the lyrics correct. Rocks did feel pain. She hoped that Thurman’s end had been quick.

Thurman hadn’t lived a useless life—but his was a useless and unnecessary death.

She vowed to find a way to stop Arnold from killing again. She had to save Pete.

Chapter 2.2

Thomas took a deep breath and plunged into the argument. “Your client is a rock, a piece of granite, a decoration on a building. As such, he has no legal rights whatsoever. He’s a
thing.”
His hideous point made, he lowered his voice, turned away from Evelyn, and addressed the judge. “We ask that this case be summarily dismissed, Your Honor, thrown out of court as baseless. In fact—”

“Your Honor!” Evelyn squeezed her hands into fists. “I argue that my client does indeed have rights. That he is living, breathing, and entitled to—

“I agree. I find for Pete the gargoyle and his most awesome counsel, Evey.” The judge pounded a beer can against the overturned milk crate serving as his bench and leaned back as much as the folding chair allowed.

The “courtroom” had been set up on the roof of the law office to better accommodate Pete, who had separated himself from the trim and was seated on a folding chair next to Evelyn, his feet planted firmly on the rooftop. The gargoyle was only about three feet tall, with stunted wings that could not possibly sustain his heavy granite form in flight, even if he could survive being separated from his building. Thomas had played Dungeons & Dragons in college and thought Pete looked like a goblin from the game’s
Monster Manual.
The gargoyle’s given name was Permythius, but Zaxil, and by extension Thomas and Evelyn, called him Pete.

“You’re not helping, Zaxil.” Thomas had been playing the opposing counsel in the mock trial, looking after the interests and intentions of Franklin Arnold. He didn’t like the role, but he was best suited for it, as he’d spent long weeks poring over building codes and laws and could guess what legal tactics Arnold’s team would use. “In fact, Zaxil, you’re just making this more difficult.” He scowled at the acting judge.

Zaxil Mandala, or Z-man, snapped open the beer he’d been using as a gavel and took a sip. “Not as good as that micro-brew you brought up here the last time,” he told Thomas. “What was that brand? Oh yeah, Gubna’s Oskar Blues. That was fine, fine stuff.”

Back then, Thomas could carry a six-pack up to the roof, and could share it. Back then, Thomas was still breathing.

Thomas’s wispy form was difficult to distinguish from the smoggy haze that hung over the city this afternoon. At least he couldn’t smell the cloud; in life Thomas thought the smog that crept into Haight-Ashbury reeked like an old man’s fart. Now Thomas couldn’t smell anything.

Thomas debated sinking through the roof to gather his thoughts so he wouldn’t say something to Zaxil that would hurt the young man’s feelings. Thomas knew Zaxil cared deeply about what was going on, but outwardly it looked like he wasn’t taking this seriously enough.

Zaxil rolled his shoulders, the folds deepening in his baggy ALCATRAZ ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT sweatshirt. Short, skinny, with smooth ebony skin and inky hair shaved so close it resembled a swim cap, he looked more like a street punk than the building’s landlord. The faded blue jeans that rested around his hips and a yin-yang eyebrow ring added to the image. Zaxil had been resisting Arnold’s repeated attempts to buy it.