Killer's Gambit (Psychic For Hire 3)

“Thank you, sir,” said Storm.

“I plan on totally switching off this holiday. Including switching off my phone. I’m going to be completely unavailable, and when I come back it’ll be my expectation that any issues that currently exist will have resolved themselves as if by magic.”

Storm tried not to smile. He nodded. “I’m sure they will have, sir.”

“Because I would hate to fire my best team,” said the chief as his parting shot. “Especially knowing that the Otherworld embassy will make sure that the five of you never find work in this field again, and knowing vampires, unemployment might become the least of your worries.”

Chapter 18

DIANA

It was mid-afternoon by the time I finally made my way to the address that Audriett Ronin had given me for the house that Joshua Ashbeck and his daughter Leonie had once lived in.

All I had left now was this case. I’d walked out on my team and I’d spent most of today trying not to think about it. I felt crap. These past three weeks working with the Agency and the team had felt like the steadiest three weeks in my life. My loft office at Agency Headquarters had begun to feel like home. But now I’d walked out.

I knew it was my fault, but that didn’t stop me from being angry at Storm. I had almost thought he would stop me, and that he would agree to help.

It just went to show that myself is all I ever really had. Just me, myself, and I. Just me and my goddamn navelstone, which must have started vibrating sometime during my fight with Storm and had not stopped since. All day it had been a tiny tremor in my midsection, demanding with urgency that I had to find the Devil Claw Killer. I had to investigate this case. There was no alternative.

Magda was dead. I remembered the day I had found her so clearly in my mind. I had seen DCK’s mark, the bloody clawed pawprint, on her kitchen door. My mind had refused to believe what it was seeing, so I had opened that door and found Magda lying in a pool of her own blood on the linoleum of her tiny kitchen. Her body had been savaged, but her face had been untouched. He had killed her, like he had killed twenty-seven other women in just eight years, for nothing other than his own pleasure. He was a monster who had to be stopped. How fitting that I, supposedly the Angel of Death, was going to stop him. A monster to kill a monster.

I bit my lip. If that’s what I was. It seemed impossible sometimes. Surreal. But why else did I have this overwhelming killing urge that blew up out of nowhere and made me fear that I would do something terrible to someone who didn’t deserve it? If I had to kill someone it was going to be him. And then maybe, once I had killed such a terrible monster, it would be out of my system for good, and I could get on with my life.

I arrived at the address and jabbed the doorbell. My best hope was that the current resident would have a forwarding address for Constance Ashbeck. I doubted it, but I had to try. When nobody answered the doorbell, I stuck my ear against the door and listened. I couldn’t hear any sound within, but that didn’t mean someone was not at home. So I stuck my finger back on the doorbell and kept it pressed down.

It would be damn annoying if no one was in. I had wasted several hours already today hanging around the Petrichor Club with Finch, interviewing the few staff who we had in found the during the daytime. Finch had insisted on coming with me. He was determined to find Zezi. It made me almost felt guilty that she had dropped down on the list of my priorities. It was good that Finch was involved now. He had said that he would go back in the night time when the club was open to interview the customers. I hoped he would have some luck, but I was worried that he wouldn’t make much progress. Finch wasn’t exactly a pushy guy, and sometimes you had to be pushy to make people speak. Or you had to be a psychic like me and sense that they knew something that they were unwilling to tell you.

It had been quite nice having Finch for company. Perhaps I’d become a private detective and work for myself. Perhaps once I was making enough money I’d offer Finch a job. But I didn’t want to think about that. Because it meant accepting the fact that I no longer worked with Storm and his team, and that was not something I was ready to deal with.

I had had my finger pressed to the buzzer for a full minute now, and still nobody had answered the doorbell. And yet I felt certain that somebody was inside. I had closed my eyes and tuned into my psychic radar and I could feel their presence like a faint hum in the web of the psychic backgrou

nd music. I was sure that someone was inside, and wishing that I would go the hell away. So I took my finger off the buzzer and then I jabbed it repeatedly, which was far more annoying an experience for them.

Some minutes later, someone finally came to the door. I could see them on the other side as they peeked through the peephole at me. I no longer had my Agency badge to flash, so I yelled through the door instead, “Hello! My name is Diana. I need to speak with you.”

The woman who finally open the door had dark uncombed hair and thick eyebrows. She was a faded beauty in her early forties who looked like she had taken great care in her appearance at one time, but not any more. She peered at me warily through the narrow gap she had opened in the door, leaving the safety chain on. Which was quite funny really, because I could have broken it with a kick, and I wasn’t particularly strong. The woman seemed fully aware of this, and I was sure that she had her shoulder and her foot wedged up against the door as a precaution.

“Is it Scoot?” the woman asked, her brow furrowed with worry.

I gave her a sympathetic look, and nodded. “It is Scoot, I’m afraid. Can I come in?”

The woman looked like she was about to burst into tears. She opened the door to admit me entrance, and then hurriedly closed it behind me. She reattached the safety chain, and threw three deadbolts into place. Talk about security conscious!

She twisted her hands together and didn’t seem to know what to do with me. “Oh God,” she said. “Poor scoot. Can the vet help him? Please say he can!”

“I’m sure he can,” I reassured her, and edged around her to make my way into the lounge. All the better to not be thrown out. I passed a dog basket on my way. There was a plump cushion and several toys in it. Scoot was obviously a well pampered doggie.

The woman followed me in as I took a seat on the sofa in her lounge. “Did the vet say when he can come home? He’ll be missing me. Poor Scoot. I wish I could have gone with him.”

“Actually, I don’t really know about Scoot,” I confessed. “I’m here about Constance Ashbeck. Her bother used to live in this house. Joshua Asbeck?”

The woman’s face had gone extremely pale. She had taken several steps back from me the moment I had said Constance’s name. A hand scrambled on the table beside her until she found an empty decorative vase, which she raised up as if she was going to bludgeon me with it. “Get out!” she cried out in a shrill voice.

I stayed where I was sitting. “Ah, so you do know Constance and Joshua Ashbeck?”

“I don’t know anything,” she said in a shaking voice. “I don’t know anything. I don’t have anything to do with it. You tell them that I don’t know anything!”

“Are you talking about the Ronins?” I asked, beginning to feel sorry for her.