Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

They parked in front of the manager’s office. A block of tall buildings with rolling garage doors and loading docks stretched off to the south. Three big rigs stood parked at the docks, but nothing was moving in or out of the warehouses. The manager, a painfully thin woman with a nasal cannula running down to her portable oxygen supply, gave him the access code and universal key. As Mason walked down the loading docks, Scarrey trotted beside him.

“The company that was renting the warehouse legitimately,” Scarrey said. “Have they reported anything odd about the space since?”

“Nope. Nothing going bump in the night. At least nothing they’ve told me about.”

“Hm.”

“Expecting something?”

“Well, you’d expect people to be nervous at least, wouldn’t you?” Scarrey said. “Something terrible like that happens, and people draw back or they lean forward. It’s very rare that they can remain unaffected. Of course, it would have to be something significant to deserve official mention.”

“Sounds like you don’t think our boy was really trying to call up the devil.”

“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Scarrey said.

Mason stopped at the door. M-15 in black on flaking yellow paint. He keyed the passcode into the button pad beside the door, put in the manager’s key, and, with a loud clank, the warehouse door began to rise. Scarrey ducked under it, hurrying inside. Mason waited until he could walk in standing straight.

The place looked innocuous. Simple. Innocent. The boxes and shelving that Sobinski had moved aside were back where they belonged. The air smelled like car exhaust and WD-40, not incense and blood. The chalked words and diagrams had been washed off the floor and walls. Mason pulled back his shoulders, stretching until something in his spine cracked. Scarrey was walking around the place like a tourist in Times Square, blinking and craning his neck. He walked once around the whole place, fingertips trailing on the wall, touching the boxes of cheap DVD players and third-rate audio equipment, his eyes squinting up into the blue-white fluorescents.

“Did you see her?”

“I did,” Mason said.

“What did it feel like?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, that’s the problem with reports, isn’t it? They never tell you the really important parts. I know she was here,” Scarrey said, standing as near to the right place as the shelving would let him and raising his arms as if the chains and hooks had been in his own flesh. “And I’m thinking suspended from that rafter and the pipe over there, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s the kind of thing reports tell you. They never say what it felt like. When you saw her, did it make you happy?”

“She was a kid,” Mason said. “She was tortured and killed by a sick asshole, and we were too late to help her. What do you think?”

“I don’t know, but it’s important. Did seeing her body here make you happy?”

“No.”

“Sexually aroused?”

“Yeah,” Mason deadpanned. “Absolutely. Boner you could drive nails with.”

“Don’t do that,” Scarrey said. His voice was low now, and very serious. “Don’t joke about this. I can’t tell what you’re joking to cover. Did the body arouse you sexually?”

“Fuck no, it didn’t,” Mason said.

“Good. Good good good.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Did what happened here make you happy?”

“Lots of things have happened here,” Scarrey said. “Some of them were terrible. Meaning what happened with that girl. Some of them were quite pleasant.”

“Like?”