Another dead end. Shouldn’t have been surprising. The detective’s higher-ups in the ACPD had thought he was wasting his time by taking this case. A dozen missing, mostly homeless men and women from Skid Row, half of them John and Jane Does, right around the same time as this fire at the homeless shelter: not exactly front page news after the mysterious bombing of the Angel offices just a week ago, and not exactly a high priority for the police, either. The Angels had pull in their namesake city.
But Sylvester couldn’t help feeling something was going on. And if there were twelve reported disappearances, how many actual disappearances were there? Sure, it could have been coincidence. But things were happening elsewhere. And Sylvester had learned to trust his intuition. Higher-ups in the ACPD had quietly urged the detective to quickly wrap the case up so it could simply be moved to a dead-end file in missing persons and they could label the fire as an accident, since the examiner wasn’t sure it was arson. But Sylvester wasn’t ready to move on. Not just yet.
The detective’s mobile phone rang from inside his jacket. Sighing, he reached into the breast pocket and pulled out his phone. He checked the caller ID: it was headquarters.
“Sylvester here,” the detective barked into his phone. He listened to the tinny voice on the other line. “Right now? I’m all the way downtown.”
He paused to listen again.
“Yes, I understand,” he said. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
When the elevator doors opened on his floor at the ACPD, Detective Sylvester found himself facing his old partner, Bill Garcia.
“What’s going on, Bill?” the detective asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Susie and the kids and I were just sitting down to dinner when I got the call. I just got here.”
Sylvester simply nodded.
The two police officers began walking together through the open bullpen of cubicles that served as command for the Homicide Division of the ACPD. Sylvester’s mind wandered briefly back to the year before, when he had been tracking the demon that had been murdering Angels along the Walk of Angels.
He thought of the night he was taken off the demon case, when he’d had a cubicle in this very room. His dismissal from the case had come by direct order of the Angel authorities. His bosses had planned to boot him back downstairs to deal with petty larceny, but instead of going home that night, he’d tracked the demon to Angel City High School, just in the nick of time – it had cornered Maddy and Jackson. Then, after his plan to help the girl and wrongly charged Angel escape Angel City had failed, the detective found all hell breaking loose on the freeway when the demon attacked the convoy of Angel vehicles. With grim purpose, he had driven to the NAS headquarters and challenged the Archangels to act – before it was too late. Some people in the department had called him a hero. In his eyes, he was just doing his duty and didn’t want a fuss.
After Sylvester’s vindication during the demon crisis last year, all had been forgiven, and the detective had even been given a little more authority, along with his own office off the main cluster of cubicles. He’d become golden in the department. His office was small, the coffee-maker didn’t work, and the blinds looked like they came from 1982. But it was a good space for working on cases.
Taking a breath, the two police officers stepped into the office. Captain Jim Keele smiled broadly when he saw them. He knew how to lay it on thick when needed.
“David, Bill, come in,” the captain said, a steaming cup of coffee on his desk.
“Captain?” Sylvester said expectantly.
“You want to know why you’re here. Understandable.” Keele put his elbows on the table and grinned tightly. “You may have heard about the bombing of the Angel offices last week.”
Garcia raised an eyebrow. “You’d have to be living under a rock not to know about it, sir.”
“So you both understand the importance of this case. And right now we have no leads, except for a drowsy office worker on a smoking break who thought he maybe saw something. This is making things . . . difficult for us. For the department. A big black mark on our police work. Our lab hasn’t been able to pull anything of value from the site, and we’re standing around twiddling our thumbs.”
“We’re running labs, Captain? What about the Angels?” Sylvester asked. “From what I’ve heard, they’re confident they can find those responsible. They’re insisting they can handle it themselves. They’re convinced it’s the Humanity Defence Faction, or some kind of splinter group.”
“He’s right, Captain,” Sergeant Garcia said. “You sure you want to go against the Angels on this thing?” Garcia added, “We stay out of their way. I thought that was ACPD department policy if they gave the say so.”
Captain Keele clasped his hands together in front of him. He leaned forward on the desk. “I can’t say from where, but we’re getting pressure on this thing. It doesn’t matter if the Angels think they can handle this alone. We’re doing our own investigation, whether they want it or not. You’ve seen what’s going on with Senator Linden, the support he’s gaining across the country. Some winds may be changing in the department. This goes high up. Higher than you would even dream. As you can imagine, politics are involved. Which is why we’re keeping this close.”
Detective Sylvester narrowed his eyes, looking through his glasses at the captain. “About time at least some of our commanders got out of the back pocket of the Angels.” He motioned to Garcia beside him. “So what’s our role?”
“David, we’re bringing you in special to handle the investigation from now on. Sergeant Garcia, you will be assisting in the investigation. You two were world-beaters last time around with the demon killings on Angel Boulevard. Let’s see if you can do it again.”
Detective Sylvester pulled off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. Calmly, he put them back on and looked at Captain Keele: “You know how many homeless have gone missing this week now, Captain, before and after that fire? I just came back from downtown. We could be dealing with some sort of serial kidnapper or murderer or perhaps arsonist. We need to be focusing on this, as well. Maybe I could split— ”
The captain cut him off. “One hundred and one per cent of your time is to be spent on this new case, Detective.” He took a sip of his coffee. “We have a mass murder, you investigate the murders. Not ghosts out on Skid Row. Have I made myself clear? Do you not see these stripes?” he said, motioning to the bars sewn into the uniform on his shoulder, indicating high rank. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, you have some police work to do. You are dismissed.”
Sylvester went home, but he wasn’t looking to relax: he was running two investigations now, whether Keele knew it or not.
The dark spires of the Blessed Sacrament Church rose beyond the window of the detective’s apartment, which was in a classic Spanish-style Angel City building from the 1920s. The detective found a glass and placed two ice cubes in the cup.
Opening a bottle of twelve-year Scotch h
e kept on top of the fridge, Sylvester poured himself a drink. The amber of the liquor spooled with the melting ice. He swirled the ice once, then twice, and took a drink, letting the warmth drop down his chest.