The precinct was peaceful this morning, just the usual coming and going, the silverfish calm, the spiders content and fat from all the flying insects summer so generously provided them through open windows and doors. Luke Gelman was here one week sooner than Andi would have expected, which could mean a case from the office for them. This past spring, they had agreed to work for this mysterious governmental branch, so Luke had started coming down monthly to check in with them and show them how to fill out the forms the office needed. Apparently, even super-secret agencies needed tons of writing to be functional. They were still waiting for their first mission, not that Charleston was providing them with generous amounts of corpses.
Since Chief Norris now knew about him as well, the atmosphere at the precinct had changed for the better, allowing him and George to work their cases in peace, knowing Norris would have their backs—not enthusiastically since they hadn’t progressed that far yet—but with a growing sense of responsibility for her two best detectives.
George had already reached their desks with the two whiteboards they used to brainstorm their cases when her voice cut through the hubbub of the bullpen. “Hayes, Donovan! My office!”
Her attitude might have changed a bit, but her methods were still the same. It was something Andi could respect. He and George detoured to her office, making their way through the maze of desks where their fellow detectives were working on their cases.
“Gelman is with her,” Andi whispered to George, who took the information with a nod.
“One week early. Guess it’s going to be our first case for the office.”
Clearly, they were thinking along the same lines. George opened the door for Andi to enter the office first, something he could now do without getting all his defenses up. There was still a certain weariness, as his memories of the chief’s office weren’t happy ones, but seeing the same feelings mirrored in Chief Norris’s face made it easier for him to adjust to the new normal. The spider living outside the window was…
Barging toward the fly, hunger, hunger, the wild vibrations of the net where the prey was caught racing up through his legs, telling him size and exact location, even the weight, poison pumping into his fangs, tiny drops forming at the tips, ready, he was ready to kill, the prey was fighting, more and more lines of the net ripping, floating in the soft breeze, but it was no use, he was there, on the huge bluebottle, his fangs sinking in, the poison seeping into the body, dissolving the insides, his hind legs already guiding the new thread forward under his back segment, toward the dead prey, to spin it into a neat package, for consumption as soon as the insides were liquid, his fangs?—
“Andi?” Luke sounded a little worried.
“Hmm?” That, too, was an improvement. George didn’t have to cover up for him when talking to the chief and Luke. His partner’s warm hand on his lower back helped him to return to the office, to Norris and Gelman staring at him with a mixture of wonder and amusement in their eyes. George was his usual calming presence, one Andi needed more and more these days. He had gotten quite good at shielding himself, almost as good as it had been before this latest surge in his geschenk. Still, there were instances, like now, when he got sucked into a single arthropod, his connection taking on new dimensions where the lines between him and them got so blurred he couldn’t tell where he ended, and they began. “Sorry. Just witnessed a brutal murder.” He pointed with his chin to the window frame where the partly destroyed net was visible, together with its owner and her latest meal.
Luke shuddered, Norris just rolled her eyes, and George gently guided him to one of the chairs in front of the chief’s desk. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your premature visit, Luke?” George grinned at the man who they were still unsure if he was an ally, an enemy, or simply a nuisance. Andi leaned toward the latter. Luke’s pheromones didn’t taste of betrayal or something similar unpleasant, and he would never be able to see the man as a true friend. Not that Andi had any of those to begin with.
Luke nodded at them, returning the grin. “Outstanding detectives that you are, you have probably guessed I’m here on business.” He gestured to Norris. “As I’ve already informed your chief, I’m going to steal you for what will hopefully just be two days to give your counsel on a case in Spartanburg.”
The chief tapped her fingers on her desk. “Agent Gelman’s timing is impeccable because you’re in between cases, aren’t you?”
George nodded. “We wrapped up the murder in Goose Creek last Friday.”
“Then consider yourself officially dispatched to Spartanburg to aid the police there in solving a possible murder case.” She closed a file she’d had in front of her. “As I was told, I’m not needed for further procedures. You can take Agent Gelman to your desks where he can brief you.” When Luke cleared his throat, she shrugged. “Or you can show him to one of our conference rooms to be briefed there without anybody being able to listen in. Better?” She lifted a brow, clearly reaching the end of her patience.
Gelman grinned, which caused the tiniest twitch of her lips, something else Andi wouldn’t have thought possible a few months ago.
George was already up and opening the door, gesturing for Andi and Luke to go outside. Andi nodded at Norris, who lifted her chin. For them, it was practically heartwarming. “Chief.” George did his own chin-lifting, which got him a “Detective Donovan” in return. They left the chief’s office and marched through the bullpen to the back door, behind which a small corridor with several conference rooms was located. George took the first one, shutting the door firmly once all three of them were inside.
Luke sauntered to the table and put his messenger bag down before pulling out a thick file. Thick files were never good. The silverfish in the room informed Andi that Luke was still in a battle with his nail fungus, the sharp profile of the polish he used as much a part of him as the unique shape he presented through the legs of the spiders in the corner and the pheromone picture the dying moth at the ceiling provided. For Andi, it was as if Gelman’s body, the solid thing he could see with his own—very mediocre—eyes, was over-layered with versions of him that were at the same time more accurate and yet a lot blurrier than what Andi’s human senses provided.
George stepped next to him. His profile so familiar, Andi immediately relaxed. His partner braced himself on the backrest of one of the chairs. “What have you got for us?”
Luke opened the file, his body language just hesitant enough to make Andi look closer. There was a spike in his pheromones. Something wasn’t quite right, not inherently wrong either, for that Luke was too calm.
“Well, the more correct question will probably be, what have you got for us?”
George cocked his head. “Are we playing twenty questions?”
“No. I’m just not entirely sure how to present the facts to you because I’m not entirely sure what the facts are.”
“How about you just hit us with whatever you think you got, and we’ll go from there?” His partner, always the diplomat.
“Fine. If you ask the chief of the Spartanburg Police Department, Timothy Savalle, he’ll tell you that there is no case whatsoever. That it’s all just a string of freaky coincidences.”
“By the tone of your voice, I assume there are people who do not share the chief’s view?” Andi always marveled at how good George was with words.
“Well, there is one FBI agent, Susannah DeCapristo, who very loudly insists that there is no such thing as a coincidence.”
“She’s probably right.”
“Not necessarily.” Luke selected a paper from the file. “We’re looking at nine possible murders, starting last year in April.”
“You think that because…” George tried to be patient, but Andi could read it in the tension of his muscles as well as in the tiny electric shocks that said tension sent through the room, unnoticed by the humans but like lightning for the pill bugs under the skirting.
