Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

She imagined it. Narrow letters scrawled across the glass. Handwriting, spray-painted, scraggly, and too large. Hurried, even though they had had all the time they could need. Testing the waters. Feeling their oats. Getting bored with the ease of it all.

A faint image came to her, the shape of the group moving toward the stores, one lagging a little behind. “Someone’s feeling ballsy. Teenagers, Lio. You’re looking for teenagers. But I’ll find ’em first.”

He let her go, and she swept out into the main room, found Wright released and drinking cop-shop coffee. He said, “Finally free?”

“I’m not a dangerous criminal after all,” she said, kept moving for the main door. “This visit didn’t even cost me money. Just my head start on a case.”

He gulped down the last of the coffee and hastened after her. “Where to now?”

“Depends,” she said. She juggled her cell phone into her hand and dialed Alex. If Alex could pull the plate information soon enough, Sylvie could beat the cops to the cars’ owners. After a visit from the police, they’d be stirred and defensive.

Just before it went to voice mail, she was rewarded with a series of clatter s and thunk s, then a sleepy mumble. “Syl? You in jail again?”

Sylvie laughed. “Shaking the dust from my feet as we speak.”

“Then c’n I go back t’sleep?”

“Run some plates for me first? Addresses first, personal info as you can?”

Alex yawned, an audible jaw-cracking contagion that set Sylvie off in response.

“I guess.”

Sylvie snapped her fingers at Wright, hovering politely just out of hearing range. He scowled in response to her abrupt demand for his attention, spread his hands in the universal “what?” gesture.

She bit back her own irritation. Fugue state, ghost, right. Whatever had happened, Wright didn’t remember it. She pointed at his jeans, and said, “Pocket.”

He found the crinkled paper with weary surprise and passed it over. She rubbed her thumb over the elegant script, noticing this time that the handwriting was different. His earlier notes had been squared off, the pencil tip pressed into the paper. That was strange but might fit with a trauma-induced personality shift. Or someone using the muscles of his hand differently.

Cedo Nulli. The memory spiked her adrenaline straight to redline, jolted her heart. How did Wright know about that? If it were the god of Justice poking around in her life again, he’d have dropped by, made sure she helped Wright out.

The government thorn in her side, the Internal Surveillance and Investigations agency, knew about her personal motto inked onto her skin. They could have set her up. Wright could be some sort of poisoned apple. It would be just like the ISI, overelaborate and sneaky.

But Wright seemed genuinely scared. Even now, standing in a sunlit Miami morning, he couldn’t rest. He was all angles, jittery, restless, moving from one defensive posture to another.

“Syl?” Alex whined, waking Sylvie back to the moment. Sylvie read off the plates’ numbers, let Wright’s problems slide. “The ones I’m most interested in are a Navigator and the Subaru. More room for stuff.”

“Did they get stuff?” Alex asked, all disapproval. “You were supposed to keep them from getting stuff.”

“Plans change, Alex,” Sylvie said.

“That excuse is old, old, old,” Alex muttered, but low enough Sylvie could ignore it. She chose to. “Hey, Syl? Speaking of changing plans . . . Zoe took off.”

“When?” Sylvie said.

Alex sighed. “Sometime last night. I’m sorry, Syl. I was running a few programs—updating the office laptop—and I fell asleep. Woke up. She was gone.”

Sylvie sighed. She should have expected it. When she was Zoe’s age, she hadn’t paid much attention to the rules, either. Especially when there was a boyfriend waiting in the wings. “I’ll catch her later. What about the plates?”

“The Navigator’s in the Grove. The Subaru’s in Kendall. The Taurus? That’s a rental, not what you’re looking for, unless you think your thieves are renting a getaway car. The Audi is right at home on the Beach. Got a pen?”

Sylvie cadged Wright’s pencil stub and took down three addresses. “Those are pretty nice neighborhoods, Alex.”

“What? The rich never steal? Tell that to the SEC, Sylvie.”

“Your point,” Sylvie said. “Go on back to bed.”

“Wright still with you?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said, and glancing over, found she was wrong. Wright was nowhere to be seen. “Got to go.”

“Syl—what are you up to?”

“Chasing down my client,” Sylvie said. She scanned the street, found Wright waiting beside a cruiser, leaning back against the hood, idly kicking the toe of one foot against the heel of the other. His fidgeting, his quizzical expression when she waved him back over, reassured her that Wright was in charge, that his wandering off was courtesy and not fugue state.

“I mean, it’s six a.m., you just got out of jail, and if you go sneaking around the Grove, harassing people and breaking into garages, you’re going to end up right back in jail.”

“If I go now, I can beat the cops there—”

“Nope,” Alex said. “No. This is your common sense speaking. Go home. Let the cops handle it. Give them a chance, and if they screw it up—then you can show ’em how it’s done.”

Sylvie hesitated. She hated to cede the advantage when she was being paid to investigate, but she was tired, grubby, and not even sure that following up on the cars would be useful. Only in children’s books and Scooby-Doo would the cars turn out to be owned by the perps.

Alex was right. Let the cops rule out the obvious and save her the effort. Time to get some sleep. Real sleep. Whatever else that sleep spell did, it didn’t leave its victims feeling rested.

SYLVIE AND WRIGHT TOOK THE METRORAIL BACK TO THE MALL AND reclaimed her truck. She went round front of it, pulled the parking ticket with a curse—Felipe was so damn petty—then asked Wright, “Where am I dropping you?”

He slumped against the door. His face, already reddening in the slanting tropical light, grew red highlights on his cheeks and ear tips. “I wasn’t joking,” he said, quiet. “I got nothing. No money. No local connections. Nothing. This is my Hail-Mary moment. My life’s in your hands, and you don’t even believe me.”

She pulled her sunglasses from the visor, covered her expression with them. He watched her as intently as a dog, trying to read her mood.

Sylvie reached over and pushed the passenger’s-side door open. “Get in,” she said. “There’s a couch in my apartment.”

Her little dark voice growled warning, but what else could she do? Pat him down for cash, call the banks, and make sure he was telling the truth?

She couldn’t leave him at the office. Alex wouldn’t be in until noon, and that left a lot of files open to his scrutiny. She locked the file cabinets as a matter of course, but every cop she’d ever met had a dab hand at popping the usual locks. Her files were coded, but codes were easy enough to crack if someone had a talent for it.

He waited, hanging off her door like some scrawny excuse for a gigolo, nervousness in his expression, leery of her offer. Of her. Maybe even of himself.

Sylvie had a few doubts of her own. The least dangerous scenario Wright presented was that he was delusional, and she was inviting him home. She stifled her common sense, sighed, and said, “In the car, Wright, or you’ll be bunking on the beach. And sand fleas are a real bitch.”

He shook off his own worries, slipped back into the passenger’s seat like he belonged there. Once he was settled, she turned her truck for home, flicking on the radio, and flicking it off when the morning DJs blathered at them. The traffic patterns were just going to have to surprise them.