Page 9 of Wrong Way

He went back to his desk, sat down, and looked at the clean surface in front of him. Three days in Portland. Local law enforcement liaison, and no task force support. It wasn’t much, and Ortega knew it. But she had given it to him anyway, which meant she thought the lead had enough in it to be worth the allocation even if she wasn't willing to say so directly.

He was fine with that. He had worked with less and had gotten stellar results. He didn’t see why this would be any different.

CHAPTER SIX

Having been to Austin a few times in the past, Miles knew that South Congress was the kind of street that the city had built its reputation on. It was a long commercial stretch where tattoo parlors and vintage shops existed in comfortable proximity to wine bars and boutique hotels. On a normal afternoon it moved with a particular unhurried energy, tourists and locals sharing the sidewalks without much friction.

But today, there were two police vehicles parked at the curb in front of Madame Celestine's. A strip of yellow crime scene tape had been stretched across the front door, which had drawn a small cluster of people on the sidewalk who were looking at their phones and at the storefront in roughly equal measure.

Miles and Vic had landed at Austin-Bergstrom two hours earlier and driven directly to the site. Miles pulled their rental car into a loading zone half a block down and they walked back toward the tape. The small crowd that had gathered saw them coming and Miles saw at least two of them mouth: feds.

A broad, solid man who looked to be in his mid-fifties was waiting outside the tape. He had close-cropped gray hair and a jacket that had seen better years, and he was holding a paper cup of coffee in one hand. Miles instantly pegged him as a detective.

The likely detective extended his free hand right away as they approached.

"Detective Kowalski," he said. "APD."

Miles shook it. "I’m Agent Miles Sterling,” he said, “and this is Special Agent Vic Stone."

"I appreciate you coming down fast," Kowalski said. "This one's been bothering me since yesterday morning."

"Can you walk us through it," Miles said.

Kowalski lifted the tape and they ducked under it. He unlocked the front door with a key he took from his inner jacket pocket and pushed it open. They stepped inside single file, and Miles wrinkled his nose at the old smell of burned incense.

The front room was narrow and still. The dark fabric on the walls absorbed most of the afternoon light coming through the window, and the neon sign outside, the violet and gold script reading MADAME CELESTINE, was dark and cold, its power cut by the investigation. The crystals on the left-hand shelf caught what light there was and scattered it in small prismatic patches across the floor. The tarot display case on the opposite wall was intact and undisturbed, the decks arranged behind their glass in neat rows.

"The place has been operating for about seven years," Kowalski said, moving slowly so they could take it in. "The owner and sole operator was Donna Clements, forty-four. She ran it under the Celestine name. Business license, health and safety, all current. No complaints on file, no prior police contact." He gestured toward the front counter, a narrow stand near the window with a small cash register and a card reader. "That's where we found the note. But I'll get to that."

Miles looked at the counter but didn't move toward it yet. "Keep going."

They followed Kowalski through the doorway into the back room. The reading room was small enough that the three of them filled it without much space left over. The round table was still set with its burgundy cloth, the two chairs pushed back to their neutral positions. The overhead light was on, giving the place a plain sort of feel. Miles assumed there were all sorts of lighting tricks for customers.

The crystal ball display sat on its side table against the wall. The sphere itself was intact, the glass unmarked. The ornate base housing the neon element and the fog mechanism had been processed by the crime scene team, and one side of the base casing had been removed and left off, exposing the interior components. A length of yellow evidence tape was attached to the side table, not blocking access but marking it as processed.

"She was found here," Kowalski said, indicating the floor in front of the side table. "On her back, approximately two feet from the base unit. We’re pretty sure she was thrown by the force of the current."

"Who found her?" Vic asked.

"Her first appointment the next morning. A regular client who says the door was unlocked—presumably still unlocked from the night before. She came in at 9:45, found the body, and called it in."

Miles crouched near the base unit of the crystal ball display and looked at the exposed interior without touching anything. The neon element inside was a small, sealed tube, pale and inert without power. Below it, the fog machine mechanism sat on its mounting bracket. He could see where the wiring ran from the internal components down through a conduit in the base and out through the back, where it connected to the wall outlet on a circuit shared with the storefront sign. He wasn’t an electrician by any means, but he knew the basics.

"What about the transformer?" Miles said.

Kowalski moved to the outlet on the wall and indicated it. The outlet itself was a standard commercial receptacle, and the power supply box mounted on the wall beside it was roughly the size of a thick hardback book. It was comprised of black metal housing with two output terminals on one end. A strip of evidence tape ran across the face of it.

"It’s a neon sign transformer," Kowalski said. "This one's rated to output somewhere between eight and twelve thousand volts depending on load. That's the normal operating range for a sign setup this size. The ME confirmed the burns on the victim's right hand and forearm were consistent with high-voltage electrical contact, and the pattern of the injury and where she landed both point to this as the source."

"Do you have any idea if anything was modified or tampered with?" Miles asked.

"The ground wire. It had been disconnected from the housing and capped internally, so nothing visible from outside the unit indicated anything was wrong. The way a transformer like this is supposed to work, if the casing is touched or if there's a fault, the ground wire safely bleeds the excess current. Without it, anything that completes the circuit takes the full load." Kowalski looked at the unit, frowning. "Whoever did this also made an adjustment to the connection between the primary and secondary windings that reduced the internal impedance. Our electrical contractor, who looked at it, said that the modification pushed the output toward the higher end of the voltage range and made it more consistent, less likely to fluctuate and trip a breaker before it delivered a full shock."

"So, the circuit breaker didn't trip," Vic said.

"Didn't trip, didn't flag anything,” Kowalski confirmed. “The modification was done cleanly enough that the system read as normal right up until contact was made." Kowalski took out his phone and pulled up several photographs, handing it to Miles. He held it out a bit so Vic could see as well.

"This is the sphere housing before we removed the side panel,” Kowalski said. “You can see the point of contact she would have reached for. The metal rim at the base of the sphere connects directly to the internal bracket, which connects to the transformer output through the wiring harness."