The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

“Am I getting detention?”

“You’re going to want to watch that kind of thing too. Saragossa Blackburn is dead and someone is making accusations.”

“Against me?”

“Yes. We need to deal with this.”

“What happened to him?”

“Later. Shonin, I’ll have some ­people come by

to help you put your lab back together. Between that and the breakthrough with the demon, it sounds like you have enough work to keep you busy for a while.”

“More than enough. You really think he killed Blackburn? I studied ­people a long time. He’s a fool, not a murderer.”

“We’ll see,” says Wells. He goes to the door and holds it open for me.

I turn to the Shonin.

“See you around, dead man.”

“Keep your nose clean, dumb-­ass.”

IT’S A LONG walk to Wells’s office. The silence is different this time. It’s not the general silence of ­people going quiet as I pass. Now it’s Wells’s silence as he walks slightly ahead of me so he doesn’t have to speak or look at me. This is truly fucked and potentially dangerous. But I have my na’at, my gun, and my blade. If things go bad for me, I’ll make them worse for everybody else.

Wells’s office is at the far end of the Vigil clubhouse. There’s a plastic Christmas wreath on the door. Inside it’s all wood paneling. A desk big enough you could rodeo on it. A Marshals Ser­vice seal and Vigil sigil on the wall behind. A cross on his desk. Everything you need to put the fear of God and Gitmo into anyone he drags in here. There’s also something very loud in the room and it’s in a really nice suit.

“Marshal, I want you to place this man under arrest right now,” says Audsley Ishii.

Wells goes around his desk and sits in his leather executive chair. I’m betting he’s not getting comfortable, but positioning himself so he’s in reaching distance of his Glock.

“Based on what evidence?”

“Don’t talk to me like you don’t know Stark. Living in Hell. Playing the Devil. It’s driven him insane. Don’t forget that a few months ago he broke into the Augur’s home and threatened him.”

I look at Ishii.

“And I saved his wife and him from Aelita. How did he die?”

Ishii raises a righ­teous finger.

“Don’t play detective, like you’re investigating a crime you don’t know about. It was a Saint Nick killing. You have a history of cutting ­people up, don’t you? Story is, you cut off a friend’s head and still have it in your house.”

Wells picks up a pen and puts it back in the holder on the edge of his desk.

“We know all about his relationship with Aldous Kasabian. Do you have any actual evidence that Stark was at the murder scene?”

Ishii takes a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and drops it on the desk.

“We found this.”

Wells has a look and hands it to me. It’s the torn edge of a receipt from Max Overdrive. There’s a mark on it like it was stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe. Or marked to look that way.

I say, “Seriously? You think I wouldn’t check myself over before running off to kill the king of the Sub Rosa?”

“Blackburn told me that he was afraid for his family’s safety,” says Ishii. “He invited you over and a ­couple of days later he’s dead and this is at the scene. You can’t dismiss that.”

I look at Wells. He’s the sphinx. I don’t get anything from him at all.