“Well, would you look at that. It’s good to see you joining the world, Nell. It’s real good. You coming to church soon?”
“As soon as this case is closed,” I said.
“We’re having dinner on the grounds every Sunday thismonth. We’re smoking a whole hog each week, with all the trimmings. Raising money for the Baker girl, the one with leukemia.”
“I’ll make a donation even if I can’t come,” I said.
“The Lord’s work is never done.”
I went around the desk and hugged him, which seemed to freeze Mr. Thad solid for a moment before he hugged me back. I had never taken the initiative with him. I wasn’t sure I had ever been the hugging originator with anyone except family. It felt good. “Later, Mr. Thad.”
•••
I was only a few minutes late to work. Dusk was the usual time for the EOD—end-of-day meeting—and current case summary, but with us all off for twelve hours, it was more like SOB—start of business. I slid into my seat at the conference room table only moments before Soul took her place. The smell of eggnog and sugar cookies rode on the air. The little tree’s lights were on.
JoJo opened without preamble. “Clementine. Note date and time. Present are all members of PsyLED Unit Eighteen and the assistant director. As of seventeen minutes ago, we have discovered Justin Tolliver’s biological father. His name is Charles Healy.”
I sat up straight. Soul looked surprised. She had been on duty and she clearly didn’t know about Healy, so JoJo must have been working from home instead of sleeping.
“In 1973,” JoJo said, “Healy was incarcerated on weapons charges, for selling stolen military weaponry to third-world companies through contacts he made in the Vietnam War. An undercover ATF officer died in the takedown, and when the ammo was traced to Healy’s weapon, the feds threw the book at him and he was convicted on all charges. He should be eighty years old and still in federal prison, but he disappeared during a prisoner transfer eleven years ago.”
“Where?” I asked.
“United States Penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas.”
Occam winced. I guessed that meant it was a particularly bad prison.
“Interesting,” T. Laine said, her fingers flying over her keyboard. “Yeah. I thought I remembered this. The Tolliver family has connections to a weapons factory. Did the stolen weapons come from the family factory?”
“Ask for the old court records,” Soul ordered. “Did Healy have a steady cellmate in federal prison?”
“Yeah,” JoJo said, clicking and swiping, working on three electronic devices at once. “Guy called Bradley ‘Boom Boom’ Richards. He’s still there, serving twenty to life.”
Soul said, “PsyLED doesn’t have a unit stationed in Texas. The closest is Mobile. Or maybe Arizona, with Special Agent Ayatas FireWind.” She frowned, thinking. “I don’t think we can make either one work. Dyson and Kent?” she commanded, addressing Tandy and T. Laine. “Fly out to meet with prison officials and talk with Mr. Boom Boom. See if you can interview the guards who lost Healy on the transfer.”
T. Laine said, “Whoot! Our first official flight! Overnight?”
Nose in her tablet, her earrings swinging, JoJo said, “It’ll have to be. There’s a flight out of McGhee Tyson Airport to Jefferson County, Texas, in two hours but no flight back from Jack Brooks Regional Airport until tomorrow. Booking now. If you run lights and sirens you can get there in time to make it through security.”
The two disappeared down the hallway, and we could hear them shouting back and forth about supplies, gear, electronic devices, and timing. JoJo’s face was tight, and I realized that her boyfriend... lover? some better title?... was leaving town with her best friend. She wasn’t jealous. She just wanted to be the one to go away with Tandy on an investigatory jaunt.
“You’ll have to check your weapons in your baggage,” Soul called to them.
“You booking us a hotel too?” T. Laine yelled back.
“Done!” JoJo shouted. “Confirmations for flight and hotel sent to your cells.”
And then they were gone. Soul and Rick exchanged a look that was full of something almost parental, as if to say,Aren’t the little ones cute at this stage?She slid her wide flashing black eyes to me. “Nell. It will be fully dark out soon. Would you feel up to reading the land near the DNAKeys research facility?”
My instant mental reaction was,NO!but my mouth said, “I thought we had ruled out DNAKeys as part of the problem. What do you have in mind?”
Soul shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. Everything about the case changed when we discovered that some of the Tollivers were pyros. We still don’t know why a pyro shot up the Holloways’ party and the Old City restaurant. We could have more than one thing going on and I don’t want to drop any strands just yet. I want to keep everything in the weave.”
“But the adult Tolliver males smell human. It’s the wives who smell nonhuman. None of this makes sense yet.”
“Unless—” Soul stopped. “Perhaps the males can mask all scent traces as they age. We don’t know enough and I have a bad feeling that we need to move quickly, need to tear the fabric of this case apart and knot it back together again.” Soul slowly twisted her hair into a coil, an unconscious gesture of self-soothing while she summarized. “The Tollivers own DNAKeys. DNAKeys is doing genetic research on paranormal beings to accomplish some amorphous goal. We don’t know what that goal is, so we have to consider the possibility that it pertains to this case. Brainstorm, people.”
“Okay,” I said, following her reasoning and guesswork. “What if the testing at DNAKeys has to do with some genetic problem the pyros have, or a falling birthrate, or a predisposition to some dire illness? Maybe the attacks lead back to that research.”
