Kat Richardson: Downpour

Nan nodded. “So you’ll need to confirm or eliminate his facts and nail down his background.”

“If you think he’s worth it, I’ll keep digging on Shea, but that’s going to take me away from the King County side of the investigation.”

“True. How long will it take?”

“I’m not sure. It’s going to be legwork and combing the ground every step of the way. There’s also another case that’s come up out there—a cold case missing person that might be a homicide.”

“Related to my case?”

“Doesn’t look it, but it’ll be a lot of the same interviewees, and I’d like to dog it down as long as I’m there.”

Nan’s face could have been sculpted from ice-cold bronze for all the emotion she usually displays. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow this time, but I knew she was annoyed from the way ragged orange spikes flashed in her aura for a moment. “We’ll be in court in less than a month, Harper. How long do you think the additional Clallam County investigation will take?”

“I’m not sure,” I repeated. “I’d like to get David Feldman to take over the King County work. You know Feldman’s solid. He did a lot of the background on that body on the freeway case a few years ago.”

Nan nodded. “I’ve worked with him.” She stopped talking and studied me a moment in silence. The wisps of blue and yellow energy that always coiled around her office stirred a cold draft and I shivered. “Tell me about this other case.”

Relief spread through me: She hadn’t decided to take a hard line with me about her own case taking precedence, at least not yet. I took a sip of my cold coffee and returned the cup to the table with care before I looked back at Nan. “Sometime in late 2005 or early 2006, a Lake Crescent–area resident named Steven Leung and his 2001 Subaru Forester disappeared. He was sixty-seven years old, retired from the Clallam County assessor’s office, widower, two surviving daughters. A witness claims Leung was killed in a car fire on East Beach Road and the details he provided point to vehicular homicide. I can’t find a record of any similar accident in that area in the past ten years, but the telling thing—the thing that persuades me this isn’t a hoax—is that all information about Leung just stops by April 2006. There’s nothing. It’s as if the man stepped off the planet and no one cared—not even his survivors, who never filed a missing person report.”

“Could Leung have moved out of state or entered some kind of medical care?”

“There’s no forwarding address for him so far. Even if he was in a nursing home all this time, his mail would have to go somewhere. There’s no death certificate or record of cremation or burial in Clallam, Kitsap, Pierce, or King County and no record of his car being sold or the registration renewed by anyone. There’s no release of interest to indicate he’d transferred ownership to a wrecking yard or charity, either. The only other lead I have is that the witness said something about an area called ‘Blood Lake.’ It sounds like a local place-name, but I didn’t have time to look for it before this meeting today.”

“I don’t find this missing person case that’s five years cold particularly compelling.”

She didn’t ask what I wasn’t telling her; she just fixed her commanding gaze on me and waited. I wasn’t sure how to persuade her; I couldn’t say that I had it from the ghost himself that someone had done him in and that there might be a lot more to the situation than a simple disappearance. I made up my mind and leaned forward.

The motion made me wince as the muscles in my back and abdomen pulled unevenly. I still hadn’t rebuilt all the tissue destroyed by the passage of a .45-caliber bullet through my middle and I didn’t move as fluidly as I once had. “I think it’s murder, Nan. You know that every delay in pursuing something like this lowers the chance of solving it. And yes, I know it’s five years old already, but how long should anyone have to wait for justice?”

She studied me for a few long seconds before she replied. “Are you sure you’re in condition to pursue an undetected homicide?”

“Am I in shape to chase down an unprosecuted corporate malfeasance complaint?”

Nan gave it some thought. “All right. Chase Shea for a few more days while you work your case, just to see where it leads. If you turn up enough to justify continuing, so be it. If not, I’ll expect you back on my pretrial work immediately. In the meantime, call Feldman and brief him on the malfeasance case to date and get him to work before you leave town.” She stood up and took the report file off the table. “Is there anything further on this witness?”

“Not from me.”

“Good. I need a report Monday.” She turned and strode out, which was pretty much the only way Nan walked. She was disappointed, but she didn’t give any outward demonstration. She never showed an emotion outside the courtroom that I knew of, and I wouldn’t have been able to guess what she was feeling if I hadn’t had the ability to see the colors of energy that cling and swirl around most people.

Auras and energy lines didn’t seem as blazingly bright or vibrantly colored to me as they had before I was shot. But they’d been getting a little out of hand by then anyhow, and I was just as glad that—except around Lake Crescent—the colors had faded a bit and I no longer heard a constant, inescapable singing and whispering in my head. It made me feel more human to know there were limits to what I could do and see.

There had been moments during that last, horrific investigation when I’d felt I wasn’t all that human anymore at all. The power to sink to the grid itself and to move the threads of magic, to tear them apart and push them around with impunity, had been too seductive, too alien. I’d have been just as glad to have lost that, though I hadn’t really checked the limits of my abilities yet. As I’d been warned, dying without direction had been like slamming a fist down on the magical Reset button. I believed I’d reverted to a lower, weaker state of interaction with the Grey or at least something on a less godlike scale. That was fine by me.

I gathered my papers and headed back to my own office to track down more information on Steven Leung. Outside, the February sky was the dull color of an old galvanized bucket, but it hadn’t yet begun to rain and if I walked as briskly as I could, I’d make it back to my office dry.

It’s amazing how much information resides in databases and on Web sites if you know where to look and how to pry. I do a lot of my investigative work from my computer or in records offices while someone else pokes their specialized electronic beast for me. Even a lot of my Grey work has clues and trails through the world of electrons flying through the void of cyberspace. Steven Leung, strangely, hadn’t left much trace in the cyber world. He was survived by two adult daughters and had been predeceased by a son and a wife. He owned a house out in Port Angeles—or what was listed as Port Angeles, since the postal district covered most of the northern end of the Olympic National Park and unincorporated towns nearby. The property records showed the house was still in his name and someone had, apparently, been paying the taxes. It was too late in the day to catch up to the Clallam County payroll office to find out whether his retirement was still being paid out, but I’d have been willing to bet it was. Assuming the ghost I’d seen was not some spectral joker jerking my chain, it looked as if something quietly dreadful had happened to Steven Leung.