“No, I’m sure I haven’t been. I don’t know about the lines at the office, though. If they know where Eli is, I want to hear it in person.”
I finished off the last of my coffee, sat back, and let the man behind the wheel take us to the office.
By the time we found parking, the rain had stopped. We got out. Everything was wet and when the higher clouds broke, the fog torched up with sunlight.
Eleanor drifted beside me of course. On the drive over here, I caught her staring at the statue. I almost brought the statue in with us, just in case Terric and I didn’t leave in the same car after this, but she shook her head.
So we stormed across the street, Terric and me step in step. People moved aside. I supposed we made quite a pair.
We walked into the building, took the elevator up to the office.
It had only been a few hours since I was down here getting the riot act read to me by Clyde. Funny what a difference a few hours made.
The haphazard tower of empty boxes was now a squat pyramid of neatly taped, labeled, and stacked boxes. Probably contained the few things I’d left behind and were otherwise filled with Terric’s possessions.
The framed picture of Paris he had taken back before college that used to hang in his office was propped against the pyramid.
I guess Clyde was moving in.
“Terric, Shame.” Dashiell paused halfway across the room and looked me up and down. “Those are good colors on you, Shame. But what happened to your face?”
“I ran into Zay’s fist.”
“So . . . wait. What’s that now?”
“Nothing to worry about,” I said. I strode off to the small storage closet just outside the bathroom. Mop, cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper. And up there on the top shelf next to a box of caulking tubes was a jacket.
My jacket.
One of them, anyway.
I pulled it down, turned my head, and shook the dust off it. Black, lightweight, shorter than the peacoat. Really not much more than a hoodie, but hell, it was my hoodie.
I shrugged into it. Realized that even with the bulky sweater, the hoodie still fit.
I was seriously tired of things reminding me of how thin I was. Maybe I should start working out.
Ha!
I strolled back into the main room where Dash and Terric were standing and Clyde leaned against a desk. They all had coffee in their hands.
Detour to the coffeepot. I made myself a cup, stole a truly sorry-looking bear claw sitting alone in a bakery box, and noted I’d left the baseball bat those thugs had threatened me with propped up by my desk. That was leaving with me. And so was the gun I figured was still in my drawer.
I walked over to my desk. Pulled the drawer and stuffed the gun in my pocket.
“...EMTs are taking care of him,” Terric said. “We’ll be giving Stotts our statements later today if we have time.”
“And what are you going to tell him?” Clyde asked.
“That we were planning on stopping by anyway,” Terric said. “And had a hunch that something was wrong, so we let you know in transit.”
He nodded. “Not the best we’ve ever come up with, but it should do. And you, Shame? Where do you stand on all this?”
“On the side of better donuts,” I said, turning toward them. “Where the hell did you buy this greasy sponge?”
“They weren’t for you,” Clyde said.
“Thank God for that,” I said. I shoved the last of it in my mouth and chewed. “Awful.”
“Where do you stand on this, Shame?”
“Whatever Terric just said, I’m probably against it, but am too lazy to do anything about it. So, what do we know about Eli?”
“We got a call from Davy,” Dash said. “He thinks Eli is working out of one of the hospitals in the area.”
“As a doctor?” The implications of that made my skin crawl. “Ew.”
“He didn’t say,” Dash said. “But he found this.” He walked over and handed me a printout of names.
“It’s a printout of names,” I said.
“Right,” Clyde said. “The first twenty-five on that list have hit the missing persons reports. Three of them have shown up dead in Forest Park.”
“Davy thinks Eli is . . . smuggling people out to Forest Park and killing them?” I guessed.
“He thinks it’s connected,” Clyde said. “Said there’s security footage of him being in the waiting room while one of the people on the list was there too.”
“Doctors see lots of people. Lots of patients in waiting rooms,” I said.
“You know what all those people on that list of names have in common, Flynn?” Clyde asked.
“They’re on this list?” I held up the paper.
“They were all hospitalized for tainted magic poisoning three years ago during the battle to heal magic.”
I looked at the paper. Tried to follow the logic of how that linked up with Eli. “Uh . . . buy a vowel?”
“Davy thinks Eli’s using those people who carried tainted magic as experiments,” Clyde said. “That he’s been picking them out, running tests on them, and then killing them and dumping their bodies.”
“Two things,” I said. “One: Davy does not trust Eli, has good reason not to. Two: Davy considers Eli a monster who likes to carve magic into people to screw with them just like he screwed with Davy. And two-part-two: Collins the Cutter is not that sloppy. If Eli wanted to do tests on someone and not get caught, we’d never find the bodies.”
Terric nodded. “So do you think he wants us to know he’s killing these people? To . . . lead us to him?”
“Are any of the victims altered in any way?” I asked.
“You mean with glyphs?” Dash asked.
“Or any other way.”
“Not that we found,” Clyde answered.
“Well, there were the tattoos,” Dash said.
“What?” I asked.
“Tattoos. Each of them had a tattoo somewhere on his or her body.”
“What kind of tattoos?” Terric asked. “Roses, hearts, serpents?”
“Glyphs.”
Clyde hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Lots of people have tattoos of spells now. Especially since magic has changed. There’s a bullcrap myth that if you get a tattoo of a certain kind of spell, that spell will be stronger when you cast it.”
“I’m guessing there’s a lot of fertility inks out there,” I said.
He nodded.
“Do you have a list of them, Dash?” Terric asked.
“Fertility spells?” Dash asked, a little startled.
I laughed. “The look on your face! Priceless!”
“No,” Terric said, giving me a scorching glance, “the tattoos on the missing people.”
“That, I have,” Dash said. “Shut up, Shame. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.” Then, to Terric, “Give me a sec.”
“Thanks,” Terric said.
Dash smiled like the sun had just decided to shine on him.
I watched Dash walk off and considered Terric. He had no idea. Zero clue that Mr. Dashiell Spade liked him.
So dense. I wondered if I should give Terric a hint about his secret admirer.
“If it is Eli,” Terric said, back to business before I had a chance to put my thoughts together, “why did he choose those twenty-five out of all those people on the list?”
Clyde shrugged. “Convenience and availability?”
“Naw,” I said. “Eli doesn’t mind doing things the hard way if it means he gets it his way. There’s a reason he picked these specific people. What do we have? Fifteen men, ten women?”
“Yes,” Terric said.
“Do you have files on these people?” I asked. “Photos, medical history, addresses?”
“Yes.” Dash walked back into the room. “We do.” He placed twenty-five files, folded open, across the desk closest to Terric.
“Perfect,” Terric said as he leaned down to look at the files. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Dashiell.”