We were back at the office by noon. Morales parked his SUV in the scrub-brush parking lot next to the train tracks. The old brick building that served as the task force headquarters used to be a boxing gym owned by a man named Rooster. The gym was on the second floor over a bodega that sold cold sodas, cheap snacks, and nudie magazines. We passed the entrance to the shop and went through a glass door that still bore the Rooster’s Gym logo.
My favorite part about coming back to the office was when the stink of old vinyl mats and the ozone scent of magic hit me. After working there for several months, I’d come to associate that perfume with coming home.
As we climbed the staircase, the sounds of a busy office filtered down toward us. Now that we had some new blood on the team, the old gym was always pretty busy.
At the top of the steps, I spotted Shadi Pruitt on the phone at her desk. Her combat boots were perched on the edge of her desk while she talked. The other two members of her team were in the center of the ancient boxing ring. They faced off over a table that had been set up in the center with a bulletin board nearby that held pictures and other information pertaining to their sting.
“How’s it going, boys?” I called. They were too involved in whatever their debate was to answer, but Dixon waved halfheartedly in my direction.
Deputy Dixon and Detective McGinty were our team’s version of the Odd Couple. McGinty was a BPD gumshoe who only had a couple of years left before he started collecting his pension. His mustache was more salt than pepper, and he had a ruddy Irish complexion and blue eyes that looked sad even when he smiled. He had the soft body of a cop who’d spent a good part of his time sitting in a city-issued car, but he’d been on the job so long that there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen or done. He wasn’t an Adept, but he brought tons of experience to the team.
On the other hand, Deputy Aaron Dixon had the trim physique of a runner. I hadn’t seen him eat one carb in the month he’d been on the team. He’d only recently earned his sheriff’s deputy badge after spending his early years working as a guard in the county prison. Gardner had pursued him for the team because he was an Adept—albeit one who rarely practiced the Arcane arts. But I suspected it was his rookie eagerness to please that made him so appealing to Gardner. Plus, he had a knack for technology that made him useful for surveillance and research. He might have been green, but he wasn’t na?ve. He’d grown up in the affluent Highland Hills suburb, where all the upper-middle class Lefties lived, but considering how few Black families lived there, I couldn’t imagine he had an easy time.
Shadi hung up the phone and pulled her boots off the desk. “What did Duffy want?”
“Clandestine lab explosion,” Morales said. “Someone offed the wiz before they blew the place up.”
Shadi only stood as high as Morales’s shoulder, but what she lacked in inches she made up for in badassitude. Her black hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, and her face was free of makeup—not that she needed it with her clear brown skin and high cheekbones. Besides running her own team, she also was a surveillance expert and was pretty damned handy with assault rifles. “He dumping it off on you?”
“He’s sure trying.” He shrugged. “Gotta talk to the boss lady before we know for sure. How’s your case going?”
She pursed her lips and shot an annoyed look at the men in the ring. “Good, except those two knuckleheads can’t agree on a damned thing.”
I grinned. “Have you tried couple’s counseling?”
She made a disgusted sound and raised her voice to be heard. “I’m about to give both those motherfuckers a time-out.”
The two in the ring grumbled something but went right back to their bickering.
“Good luck with that,” Morales said.
My phone buzzed at my hip. I checked the screen. The number was from the medical examiner’s office. “It’s Franklin,” I said to Morales.
Just then, Special Agent in Charge Miranda Gardner opened the door to her office. “Morales, Prospero.”
It wasn’t a greeting—it was a command. She might wear the sensible pantsuits and heels of a public servant, but only a fool would miss the authority radiating from her or the raptor’s eyes that missed nothing.
“Coming, sir,” Morales said.
I nodded to indicate that I’d join them in a minute and lifted the phone back to my ear. “Talk to me, Franklin.”
“Thought you might want to know we got the dental records. The vic was Basil Valentine.”
“Interesting.”
“He ain’t been to the dentist in a couple of decades, but the records match.”
“Did you call Duffy?”
“He told me to call you.”
“Naturally. Thanks for letting me know.”
After I hung up, I turned to Shadi. “You hear anything on your rounds about an O boy named Basil Valentine? Last I hear, he was pimping for Aphrodite.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Why?”
I crossed my arms and leaned against her desk. “That’s the name of the vic from the explosion.”
“I’ll ask my CIs. See if anything comes up.”
“Cool, thanks.”
She nodded and marched off to play referee for Dixon and McGinty. I stowed my bag at my desk and went to join the conversation in Gardner’s office.
My knuckle barely tapped the door before Gardner’s voice barked out, “Come in.”
Inside the cramped room, the tiny window let in cold, milky light. Behind the desk, Gardner sat in front of a stack of case files that were organized with military precision. She wore a brown suit that matched her hair, with a cream-colored blouse underneath that matched her complexion. She wore no jewelry.
Up until a few months earlier, she’d worn a tigereye cabochon ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Tigereye was the stone of truth and logic, and the middle finger was the Saturn finger, which represented responsibility and security. But after a run-in with a sadistic Brazilian shaman in the spring, the ring had been lost and the finger upon which it had sat was now permanently crooked and its knuckle swollen.
“Sorry, sir,” I said, taking my seat. “That was the ME. He confirmed the identity of the victim as Basil Valentine.” I said this more for Morales’s benefit than Gardner’s, but she nodded as if he’d already filled her in.
“What’s your read on this?” Gardner asked.
I sucked in a breath and blew it out, buying time to gather my thoughts. Things were always tricky when it came to working with the BPD. I was still technically on their payroll, so I had to balance that with the fact I spent every day with the task force. “It seems weird. I don’t buy Duffy’s eagerness to hand it over. Last time, he acted like we’d pissed on him when we asked to take a case.”
Morales spoke up. “He’d do it if word was coming down from the mayor’s office.”
“Explain.” She tossed her pen on the desk and leaned back as if she’d just dared me to impress her.
“According to Duffy, the increase in murder stats got the brass nervous,” he said. “Duffy said he needed to get this case off his books to up his percentages. Our guess was that Eldritch is trying to increase the closure rate to impress Mayor Volos.”
“That’s bothering me, too,” I said. “What’s with all the murders over the last few weeks? Ever since Puck got put in jail for Charm and the Brazilian’s murders things have been hot.”