“I guess we’ll find out.” George sighed.
They went back to the Escalade. All too soon the precinct came into view, and apparently some mischievous god wanted them to suffer because they immediately found a parking spot. When they reached Chief Savalle’s office, Andi could taste the agitation and tension in the air. Both Savalle and DeCapristo had worked themselves—or each other, Andi couldn’t say for sure—up to the point where their electric fields were nothing but crazy static, dizzying him with their intensity. Luke wasn’t there, the coward, probably off to do something where he didn’t get caught between a rock and a hard place.
Savalle and DeCapristo stared at them with matching intensity. It was Savalle who addressed them. “Detectives, so nice of you to come by. Do you have anything for us, or is this another attempt at placation so you can keep us in the dark a little longer? If you even have anything to keep from us.”
George didn’t rise to the bait. He showed the chief and the agent his smile number six—secret serial killer imagining the demise of his next victim—and then started to talk as if nothing were amiss. “We do have news. We were finally able to confirm that all victims have a connection to Paradise Home, even though it is, as we’ve already mentioned, a bit flimsier in some cases. We found out that when Judge Dunhill and Trevor Asten were younger, they had beaten a young Black man almost to death. Their files were sealed, but our IT specialist was able to get them. The young man they assaulted later became the husband of Tamika Byrnes, the mother of Rosalie Byrnes and a resident of the home. We’re still looking for suspects, but at least we can now say their deaths have a high probability of being linked.”
For a moment, Savalle looked as if he’d swallowed a lemon. “Those are good results indeed.”
“Did you have any doubts?” George dared the chief to spew even more hostility.
“A connection is all fine and good, and I won’t say anything about you getting access to sealed files because I guess that’s covered under your ‘special’ status, but we need a suspect. What about Rosalie? She’s Tamika’s daughter and had every reason to hate the judge for what he did to her father.” Agent DeCapristo sounded positively bloodthirsty.
“That may be, but she has an ironclad alibi for when Mr. Thomasin died, and we have no proof she even knew Isabelle Hopper.” George hated jumping to conclusions, and it showed in his tone. “We are reasonably sure the murders were all committed by the same person, although how said person has chosen their victims and managed to instrumentalize arthropods remains a mystery for now.”
“I couldn’t care less.” Agent DeCapristo hissed like an alley cat. “We have the murder weapon, so to speak, and a connection. Usually, the suspects closest to the case are the most likely offenders. I want to talk to Miss Byrnes. If she’s not the murderer, she could at least give us some insight.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, agent.” George was still projecting calmness bordering on boredom, but he was anything but. DeCapristo’s attitude rubbed him the wrong way. “Miss Byrnes is a stressed-out single mom to a daughter with special needs and, as I can assure you from personal experience, wary of the police. The only insight you’ll get from her when you bring her in for an interrogation is that she can clam up faster than you’re able to say her full name. Plus, her mother was a lawyer. Even though she doesn’t seem to have taken after her, you can bet she knows her rights. Again, I’m speaking from personal experience.”
DeCapristo’s eyes narrowed. “How convenient for you that I can’t question the only promising witness we have at the moment. Makes me wonder if anything you just told us is even remotely true.”
Savalle was leaning forward on his desk, his eyes glinting with predatory interest. Apart from the opening hostilities, he’d held back so far, which hadn’t come easily to him, and Andi had to grudgingly admit that the man might actually be suited for his role as chief. He had realized how beneficial it could be for him to let DeCapristo jump into the fray for him, which she did, because she was still a ball of raging hormones, even though they were calming down now that her period was actually happening. Andi couldn’t fathom where she got the strength not to just kill everybody who annoyed her, given the chaos in her body. He knew if he had to endure such a thing on a monthly basis on top of everything else, he would either become a hermit or be in prison for multiple murders. Her hormonal status didn’t exonerate her atrocious behavior in his eyes, but it made her relatable.
George lacked Andi’s insights, which made his answer snippy, even though only Andi could hear it. His man was so good at keeping up the façade. “And what advantage would that gain us? We were called in to determine if there is a case at all and to help solve it should this prove to be true. We just validated that there is indeed a case. For us, it would have been much easier to simply dismiss this as a string of unlucky coincidences, which, as you well know, we could have done. Then you wouldn’t have a case at all. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not expecting any gratitude from either of you. Just the respect we deserve for being, essentially, on the same team as you and doing our job even though neither of you has shown any appreciation.” All this was said in a calm tone, which took the sharpness out of the words and made them sound more like a performance evaluation than anything else. At least Chief Savalle had the decency to look slightly chastised though an actual apology didn’t come forward.
George went on without breaking eye contact with the agent. “We strongly advise against bringing Miss Byrnes in for questioning. Nothing hints at her even knowing the judge and his friend, let alone what they had done to her father. Until we can confirm a few crucial points, it makes no sense to go around and point fingers at people. Our IT person is working on it, and we’ll keep you in the loop.”
“I want to talk to this mysterious IT person. Otherwise, I can’t trust what they find.” DeCapristo sounded like a stubborn child. Again, Andi felt he could relate to her. She had come down to Spartanburg on nothing more than hot air, had her judgment questioned by Chief Savalle as well as them, had held on with the tenacity of a wolverine on the brink of starvation and now that they had confirmed her hunch—because Andi doubted it had ever been more than that, born from the desperation to prove whoever was trying to set her up for failure wrong—she was still told not to act. Which she had to do if what Geena had told them was true. She was trapped, and the only way out for her was to go forward and solve the case. In her place, he would have gone ballistic as well.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. We have to protect our sources, something I’m sure you understand.” George was polite but unrelenting in his denial of her request. It wasn’t about protecting Shireen from the agent but the other way around. With her prickly attitude, DeCapristo would get on their hacker’s bad side so fast, breaking the sound barrier would seem easy in comparison. And once Shireen got mad, things tended to get out of hand. As they would inevitably be in the middle of it all, Andi preferred to keep Shireen’s identity a secret.
For a moment, it looked as if the agent was gearing up for a fight. She straightened her shoulders, her electric fields started buzzing, and her pheromones were like a battle cry to the senses of the moths and ants in the vicinity. Then, all of a sudden, she relented, her body language relaxed, and she even managed a parody of a smile. “Fine. Have it your way, detectives. Since there’s obviously nothing more to talk about, I’m leaving.” She nodded in Savalle’s direction and left his office. As soon as the door closed behind her, the chief seemed to shake off his restraint.
“So, you’re saying my detectives made a mistake?” His intonation made it clear he was trying to protect his people, which in turn endeared him to Andi a bit more. It reminded him that, despite what the arthropods had told him about the chief’s hormone levels, there was usually more to blobs than what his tiny spies told him. It didn’t mean their information was incorrect, on the contrary, it just meant that context was important as well. Context they would never be able to grasp because to them, it didn’t mean anything. Two worlds colliding with little to no overlap.
“No. With the information they had, they could only come to the conclusion that there was nothing. Your detectives did excellent work within their means.” George, too, appreciated the chief’s protectiveness as he had missed it sorely from their own chief.
There was the slightest lessening of tension in the chief’s shoulders. He grabbed a pen from his desk and started beating it on the surface of the desk in what Andi assumed was meant to be a rhythm.
“If that’s all?” As far as dismissals went, this one was almost civil. Andi followed George to the door, giving the chief a barely there nod. The man didn’t deserve more, and by the way he, too, moved his head only an inch, the feeling was mutual. As soon as they were back in the Escalade, George dialed Luke’s number. The coward answered on the third ring.
“George, how nice to hear from you.”
“Cut it out, Luke. We’ve just informed Chief Savalle and Agent DeCapristo about our findings. We’re reasonably sure it was one killer, utilizing arthropods to get rid of Suzie Monahan, Isabelle Hopper, Jagger Thomasin, Judge Dunhill, and Trevor Asten. As far as connections go, we’re still looking into it. At the moment, it all seems to revolve around a nursing home, Paradise Home, though how, we can’t say yet. DeCapristo is desperate to make some arrests while Savalle is moderately placated because we absolved his detectives.”
“All in all, not too bad?” Luke tried and failed to inject some cheer into his voice.
“Depends on your definition of not too bad.” George was navigating the car out of the parking lot. “This whole being from a secret agency thing isn’t nearly as easy as you made it out to be.”
“If I said I’m sorry, would you believe me?” Luke sounded meek enough for Andi to believe he was being serious.
“No. Though we might be more inclined if there were a pay raise in the near future.” George sighed. “We just wanted to keep you updated. We’re going back to the hotel to write the preliminary report, and then we’re waiting on Shireen to hopefully find something else connecting the victims. We’ll keep you informed.” Without a goodbye, George pressed the button on his steering wheel to end the call.
Andi just wanted to make a comment on the report when his own phone vibrated in his back pocket. He fished it out with minimal squirming and found a link Shireen had sent him via mail with the words Read this. Could be useful. He clicked on it and was taken to a blog about Spartanburg city life. The blogger, a woman named HappyCitizen26, wrote about daily life in the city. She had to be decent because her following was in the five digits. The blog Shireen wanted him to read was about public transportation. Andi furrowed his brow.
“What is it?” George glanced at him before he looked back at the street where traffic was thick.
“A blog. Shireen sent me the link.” Andi scanned it but nothing stood out. “It’s not long, so I’m going to read it.” He cleared his throat.
