George looked at Andi, who put his phone away. He decided to play along. “Yes, indeed. Yesterday we received some new and highly interesting information from Dr. Melcourt regarding the case. We’re still waiting on a possible DNA match from various databases. We also helped apprehend Daniel Holway, who unfortunately died in the collapsing house he had been hiding in. We made a narrow escape and are fine, thank you for enquiring.”
Chief Norris stared at him as if he had been talking in a completely different language. “You went against my express orders, let the murderer of Harry Alexander McHill, David Hector Portius II, and Lawrence Miller escape and die, let yourself be led astray by whatever Dr. Melcourt has found, and had the nerve to ghost your direct superior for an entire evening. I’d say this is more than enough for me to suspend you for a month!”
“That’s what you threatened us with during the Castain case.” Andi sounded absentminded, as if Chief Norris was nothing but a nuisance to him. George was almost sure he was doing it on purpose.
“It’s what superiors do when their detectives don’t follow orders,” Norris snapped.
“We were right concerning Castain.” Still, Andi appeared unfazed.
“What do you mean?” Chief Norris’s voice had a dangerous edge now, one George didn’t like in the least. He also didn’t like the gleam in Andi’s eyes. His partner was finally ready to confront the chief. George hastened to interfere, shooting Andi a warning glance. If they were going toe-to-toe with their superior, George wanted more time to prepare in advance, not being thrown into it like a lobster into boiling water.
“He means that we’ve shown we’re capable of thorough work and that you should perhaps consider trusting us to know what we’re doing.” It wasn’t as smooth as he would have liked it to sound, but in any case, it was better than anything Andi would have said. “I’d also like to add that we didn’t have anything to do with the escape of Daniel Holway, who was in custody with our colleagues. What Dr. Melcourt found puts an entirely new spin on the case and exonerates Daniel Holway, as little good as that does him now. And as I just told you, we barely escaped a collapsing building yesterday and needed to get some rest. Now, if you don’t want anybody else to clean up the mess this case currently is, I’d suggest you let us do our job.”
Chief Norris stared at them for a long time, her eyes glinting in silent fury. He was right and she knew it. She could, of course, suspend them and hand the case to somebody else, perhaps even pin everything that went wrong on them, but it would draw even more attention to the case, increasing the chance of it looking bad for her.
“Get out.”
George had no inclination to stay a second longer than absolutely necessary in the vicinity of this woman who seemed intent on ruining him and Andi for no reason George could see. They left quickly for their own desks. Behind the relative privacy of the two whiteboards, George slumped into his chair.
“That’s another memory protocol in the making.”
“No need this time,” Andi informed him.
“What? I’d say we definitely need it.”
“No.” Andi grinned and held his phone up. “I recorded it all.”
George stared at his partner in a mixture of awe and horror. “If she had realized—”
“She hasn’t. I was looking at my texts, remember?” A small smile flashed on Andi’s lips, there and gone again. It reminded George that his partner was more than just a man who listened to insects. He was also a damn good detective with nerves of steel.
“Can you send it to me? We need to save it on our private laptops as well.”
“On it.” Andi started thumbing his phone while George woke his PC. He had several mails, one of them from CSI, which surprised him because analyzing samples and running them through databases usually took longer than a day. The person sending the report stated they had bumped their case up the moment they heard of Holway’s escape and that several tests were still ongoing. What they did have already made George smile. The cloth on which the silk and DNA had been found was a generic brand, no spectacular new insights there, but the DNA was matched to three other murder cases, one of them in the US, the other two in France and Belgium respectively. All three murders had been high profile and therefore entered into the databases of Interpol. At the crime site in Belgium, traces of DNA of a second female had been found, perfectly matching what Andi had told him about there being two women involved.
The next good news was that the silk protein Evangeline had found on the piece of cloth matched the samples from the house. The case was finally taking on a more defined shape in front of his eyes, and George couldn’t have been happier—except for Chief Norris’s erratic behavior, but George was determined to address this issue as soon as possible.
The rest of the day they spent knee-deep in paperwork, writing reports about every step they had taken so far, about apprehending Holway and how they had witnessed his death, and getting all their ducks in very neat rows, just the way George liked it. Andi did complain loudly until George appeased him with lunch at their favorite Italian restaurant, which bought him an afternoon of blissful silence only interrupted by the clicking of the keyboards. Granted, they still had to find out who had sent the two assassins, a task that gave George an uncomfortable pulsing between his temples, but they were at least sure that the persons who killed the victims had been identified. In a way. George had no illusions about how impossible it was to find professional assassins, especially if there were no names and faces attached to the DNA. Their case would no doubt be entered into the databases of Interpol and the FBI, and nobody would fault them for not finding killers who probably had left the country right after fulfilling their contract. Still, they needed to find out who had given the order to have the three men killed, and the list for that person wasn’t as short as George would have preferred.
23. Closing In
THE FOLLOWINGtwo days they had a medical examination because of the house that had almost buried them—Andi didn’t understand why they had to go because they were obviously fine, apart from some minor scratches—and a meeting with the resident psychologist to make sure they hadn’t suffered any trauma—how could they; the house had missed them, and they were still alive. They finished all the paperwork and kept brooding over the whiteboards, trying to eliminate as many suspects as possible. Because assassins weren’t cheap, they were able to thin the crowd considerably, weeding everybody out who didn’t have the financial prowess to be part of this game. It still left plenty of suspects, quite naturally because of the circles the victims had frequented. Andi was willing to bet his money on some business rival, while George insisted on keeping the wives on the list as well.
George was busy compiling the complaint against Chief Norris. Andi was the first to admit that he wasn’t well versed enough in precinct politics to understand the finer points of what George was doing. If it had been just him, he would have gotten it all out in one huge confrontation with her directly. According to George, this was not how such matters were handled because of the potential risks Andi hadn’t even thought of. He was content to leave it all to his partner, offering his input only when asked and ready to stand beside George when he decided to make his move.
Chief Norris kept her distance, not bothering them in any way. Andi was grateful for the reprieve, though he knew it was just the calm before the storm.
On the third day after the confrontation with the chief, they got surprising news from the Narcotics unit. Dominic McHill had been found dead in his house the day after Holway died. According to the coroner, McHill had died because the heroin he had injected into his arm had been laced with a combination of rat poison and fentanyl. His already weakened body and heart—the condition of his liver suggested he’d been an alcoholic for at least eight years, if not longer—hadn’t been able to deal with the potent chemical mix and simply shut down. There were no traces of a break-in; the needle with the lethal dose was found next to his body and didn’t show any fingerprints besides his own. It was another coincidence in a long line, though this one was the first Andi was willing to accept because he had sensed how sick Dominic McHill was. There was a chance his death was somehow connected to the case—Andi and George agreed it was about fifty-fifty—and they planned on looking into it as soon as possible. First, though, they had been summoned by Shireen, who was quite excited when George and Andi greeted her.
“I’m still wading through tons of information, and let me tell you, the deeper I get, the uglier it becomes. I did find something about Tabitha Clemént and Josephine Garr you might be interested in.”
Andi saw George furrowing his brows. They had taken the two women off their list because a) Andi knew they hadn’t been the ones at the lake, b) they didn’t have the money to hire somebody to do the killing for them, and c) it simply didn’t sit right with them to harass these two victims further, even if they didn’t know anything about how Andi and George were conducting their investigation. Andi still wanted to know what exactly they had planned to do at the cabin, but not urgently enough to dive deeper into the minds of the arthropods there, especially if it didn’t contribute to them solving the case.
“And that would be?” George had a way of intonating his sentences that made his true feelings perfectly clear. In this case wariness paired with a dose of annoyance. They had way too many suspects as it was. Shireen ignored the subtext with her usual cheer, tapping on her tablet with the energy of the Duracell bunny.
“We already know the two left Harvard and went to Yale after the rape and subsequent intimidation by Portius, Dyson & Partners.”
“Yes.” Andi looked at the screen where a list of names appeared, some connected through black lines. “They were lucky enough to get a scholarship there as well.”
