Diana Rowland - Secrets of the Demon

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll see about talking to others in the building.”

“Can you check and see if there’s any video surveillance?” I wasn’t too confident that there would be. The building was old and decrepit, and I seriously doubted that any of the cameras still functioned properly.

“Will do.” He turned to head out.

“Oh, and Sarge ... ?”

He pivoted back to me while I put on my best hopeful /pleading expression.

“Kara, that expression doesn’t work on you,” he said with a glower. “It looks like you have gas. Just tell me how you want to add to my workload.”

I snickered. “Well, I’d like to take a look through the victim’s residence. But, at the rate I’m going here I might not be done until late, and I’d feel awful if I had to call you out in the middle of the night if I found something that needed your expertise.”

“Yes, I’ll take care of getting the search warrant,” he grumbled, muttering dark invectives about worthless investigators under his breath as he left the room.

“Love you too, Sarge!” I called after him cheerily. I swung back to Jill. “You done with your pictures?”

She nodded as she unslung her camera. “Just finished. You need to do something?”

“Can you go ahead and collect the sample of dirt? I want to check something.” I couldn’t do this with Crawford in the room.

Jill pulled on gloves and scraped a portion of the dirt into an envelope, then stepped back. I crouched and placed my hand on the dirt that remained, shifting into othersight. Taking a steadying breath, I allowed the feel of the odd resonance to hum through me.

“It’s the same as the thing that attacked Lida Moran,” I murmured.

She crouched beside me. “A monster made of dirt. The golem.”

“Or something similar.” Shifting back to normal sight, I stood and pulled on gloves, then moved over to the desk and began opening drawers. Boring tax forms, boring letters, boring financial statements. I shuddered as a flashback from my time in white collar crimes washed over me. Too many hours spent poring over tedious paperwork ...

“Whoa,” I said, slowly pulling a paper from the top drawer

Jill glanced at me from where she was dusting the window for prints. “Got something?”

“Not sure,” I admitted. “These are photocopies of checks written to Victor Kerry ... and written by Adam Taylor, manager of Ether Madhouse.”

She frowned and came over to peer at the paper. It showed the fronts and backs of three checks, each for five thousand dollars, and each stamped with NSF. I looked to see if there was any notation for what the checks had been for, but the lines on the checks were blank. However, the back of the paper had two brief lines of handwriting: A.T. $15,000. R.P. $15,000.

R.P? Roger Peeler?

“Adam Taylor already has several outstanding bad check warrants,” I informed her.

“Hmm.” Jill furrowed her brow in thought. “So maybe Adam came up here and they fought and he chucked ol’ Vic here out the window with his trusty golem?”

“Quite possible,” I said. “Though these checks are dated from only a few weeks ago, and I don’t remember seeing any warrants for this amount. But that certainly doesn’t rule out a confrontation.” I set the paper aside and continued rifling through the drawers and file cabinets, but nothing else non-boring leaped out. A laptop case was propped against the desk, and I confirmed that there was actually a laptop within it. “Let’s take this as well,” I said.

“Sounds good. I’m finished up here,” Jill announced as she gathered up her case and camera. “If you’ll carry the laptop down, I’ll take it to the lab and submit it for processing.”

I pushed the desk drawers closed and picked up the laptop case. “Lemme give Ryan a call and tell him what’s going on.”

“Meet you downstairs.”

I nodded to her then called Ryan. “So, get this,” I said after he answered. “I think I have a homicide where the victim was thrown out a window by the same thing that attacked Lida. Or rather, the same type of thing.” I gave him a quick synopsis of what I had and who the victim was. “At first I thought that maybe Vic was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that Roger was really the target since he often worked out up here, but then I found copies of some NSF checks from Adam Taylor to Mr. Kerry.”

Ryan made a hmmphing noise. “You sure don’t go for the simple cases, do you?”

I laughed. “Where’s the fun in that? But it’s also possible that the thing with the checks is totally unrelated, and that the entire band is being targeted, one by one. But even if there’s no connection,” I continued, “now we have a legitimate reason to go talk to Mr. Taylor.”

“Did I miss something?” he said, sounding puzzled. “Why do we need a ‘legitimate reason’?” I could hear the quote marks in his voice.

“Oh, that’s right,” I replied, a note of acid creeping in. “I haven’t spoken to you yet today to bring you up to speed on Ben Moran speaking to the chief and the mayor.”

“Do tell,” he growled.

I gave him the gist of my meeting with the chief.

“I like your chief,” Ryan said gruffly after I finished.

I smiled. “Yeah, he’s all right. But now that I have a possible homicide, all bets are off. Ether Madhouse is rehearsing at Adam’s studio every night this week, and Ben Moran and the mayor can kiss my ass.”

“You’re becoming quite the rebel, aren’t you?” he said with a laugh.

“You feds are rubbing off on me.”

“About damn time. So did you want to hit the rehearsal tonight?”

Grimacing, I glanced at my watch. “Ugh. It’s four already? I don’t think I’ll be able to tonight. I have no idea how much longer I’ll be here. I want to run a search of the victim’s residence tonight as well.” Sleep? Who needed sleep?

“Stop being coy. I know how much you love all of that paperwork.” I could hear the grin in his voice.

“Wow, we have a bad connection. I’ll touch base with you later on, but I think that further harassment of Lida Moran and the band will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“That’s cool. Zack’s in New Orleans right now anyway, picking up some paperwork from the bureau office there.”

“Maybe we should sic Zack on Lida. She’ll melt beneath his charms,” I said, laughing.

“As if he needs any more reason to be cocky.”

I locked the office and returned downstairs right as the coroner’s black van pulled up. I suppressed a laugh as I saw the driver exiting the van with a pair of lopping shears in his hand. Sarge had obviously tipped off the coroner’s office as to the inaccessibility of the body.

Jill was finished with her pictures of the area, including shots of the exterior of the building. She retreated to give the van driver access to the hedge, but he hesitated, eyeing the thick bushes. He slid a hopeful glance to me.

“Any chance you have a chainsaw in your car?” he asked.

I had to grin. “Sorry!”

“Worth a try,” he said with a rueful smile as he stepped forward, lopping shears at the ready. It took him several minutes to hack his way through the hedge, and I had to agree that a chainsaw would have been more efficient. The damage to the bushes would have been about the same.