Secrets of the Demon (Kara Gillian 3)

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.