The others corroborated Mr. Culberson’s version of events. We chatted up the fireman responsible for hauling Ivashov out, and he confirmed the victim had been ready to sit at his table until the flesh melted from his bones. He didn’t put up a fight until the fireman made it clear he wasn’t leaving him to finish roasting.
According to his coworkers, Ivashov exhibited no signs of depression and had expressed no suicidal thoughts. His rampage had been an unintelligible litany of snarls and growls, so no light bulb moment there, either.
Hours later, after the fire had been contained, Rixton and I got in the car and hit a fast food joint. We parked and let the car idle while we crammed burgers and fries into our faces then washed down all the delicious grease with cold milkshakes too thick for our straws.
“We need a make and model on those drip torches.” I swirled a salty fry through my chocolate shake then popped it in my mouth. “We also need to find out if there’s any connection between Boris Ivashov and Les Rowland.”
“Or between the Hensarlings and the Culbersons,” he added. “I can’t see a tie between cotton and cattle, but there might be overlap on the administrative side or a less obvious link.”
“Loans through the same bank.” I picked up his thought process. “Policies through the same insurance company.”
“Speaking of insurance companies.” He slurped on his strawberry malt. “How did your chat go with the suit? Any progress on your claim?”
“The chat was about as much fun as you’d expect.” Understatement of the year. “No word yet on when or if they’ll be cutting us a check. Apparently, when they wrote up our policy, no one paused to consider the need to hammer out the verbiage for a super gator clause.”
Rixton grunted an acknowledgement, or maybe he’d just given himself an ice cream headache.
“No one could have seen that one coming.” His frown drilled into the oncoming darkness beyond the windshield. “My guy at MDWFP says they have yet to locate a super gator in the wild. The tracks and slides are all old. Folks got curious and hit the water searching for them, but there have been no civilian sightings either. The general consensus seems to be that Super Gator Fever flushed the beasts from their homes out into the Mississippi.”
“Gators on the river, even ones that size, could be anywhere by now.” The lie fell from my lips with ease that shamed me. Keeping Rixton in the dark was the smart thing to do, I had no doubts on that score, but I hated withholding information that might one day protect him and his family. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if I never saw another one.”
Too bad the odds of that happening were zero.
War might have beaten a strategic retreat, but she was far from defeated.
“Unit four-one-six.” The radio fuzzed to life. “We received a 911 call from a driver involved in a single car accident on Peace Street. Emergency services are en route.”
“We’ll be there in five,” I told dispatch while cramming our trash into its original paper bag. “We can clean up this mess then head back to the station. We need to pull everything we’ve got on the Hensarlings and the Culbersons. I’ll take the Culberson file with me, and you can have the Hensarlings. I could use the reading material on the drive tomorrow.”
I bit my tongue, but it was too late to call back the words. Exhaustion had made me slip up and bad.
“A drive, huh?” He threw the car into gear and spun out on the street. “Where are you headed?” I’m not sure what he saw from the corner of his eye, but it had him cackling with glee. “Or am I not asking the right question? Who are you heading there with? Who is freeing you up to read?”
“You sound like a damned owl.”
“Owls are wise, and they also deliver acceptance letters to kids who get into witchcraft and wizardry school. I’ll take it.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Now about this drive…”
Cole was the obvious answer to the real question Rixton was asking. He’d met Cole, and thanks to him defending my honor against that photog turd Moses Franke in Hannigan’s, more than a few of our coworkers assumed we’d had a fling during the Claremont case. But I wasn’t up to the scrutiny while I still sported bandages on my toes from my sprint through the woods.
“I’ll let you know if things get serious” sounded like an ideal compromise.
“My BS senses are tingling.” He tapped the side of his nose. “You’re being evasive. That means you know I won’t approve, which means I’ve met him or I know of him.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “Tell me you’re not seeing Heaton.”
“Cole and I are not dating.” That much was the God’s honest truth. “Stop fishing. You’re not going to catch anything.”
“Oh, Bou-Bou,” he lamented. “I trained you. I molded you in my image. I am the process behind every thought you have. That air current swirling under your pits? It’s not the vents. That’s me. I am the wind beneath your wings.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I twisted in my seat. “Does what you just said make any sense to you? I’m honestly curious if what I’m hearing is actually what you think you’re saying.”
“The point is this —” A solid minute lapsed during which I wondered if he had forgotten his point, or if he had ever known it in the first place. “You have insulted my powers of deductive reasoning, and for that you must be punished.”
“Let me guess.” I saw where this was heading. “Punishment involves you discovering who I’m going out with and exposing me, probably in a public forum. Let’s say the breakroom. Probably after you’ve chummed the waters with a dozen cherry-flavored jelly donuts to ensure your audience is primed to chomp at all the juicy details.”
On a slow news day, my love life was worth a column and obligatory grainy photo in the local paper. Most guys didn’t enjoy seeing their private business splashed across the gossip pages, particularly when the articles insinuated they were dating a cryptid, but the few who caught a thrill got booted before the ink dried.
“Aww.” Rixton mimed wiping away tears. “You flatter me, but no. I would never waste a dozen donuts on breakroom letches who were only in it for the sugar. I will, however, unmask your boyfriend in front of my wife, who will do the rest of my dirty work for me. Name, description, likes, dislikes, the whole shebang.”
The unspoken chastisement that I would even kid about him outing me in any way etched frown lines on either side of his mouth. The only person who hated vultures more than me was Rixton.
Misery swelled behind my breastbone until the pressure shot bolts of agony straight through my heart.
How was I going to tell him I was quitting? How was I going to justify my choice without getting into the whole I’m a demon with badass, world-ending sisters out to wipe your species off the planet specifics? And if he pushed me for details, well… yeah, Detective. How was I going to admit that as horrific as that sounded, I had brought them here?
CHAPTER SIX
As much as I wanted to head home at the end of my shift, that had Bad Idea written all over it. Even if Wu hadn’t issued himself an open invitation into my bedroom, which was damn creepy considering how often the house had sat unoccupied during the last week, leaving him free to rummage through the debris of my life, there was still the mystery of the plants to solve. I didn’t have much pride left after this morning, but I wasn’t about to risk stumbling through the yard in the dark and contracting another round of the come to mammas. Once I got hot and bothered, I had no doubt who my lust would target. I could imagine how well that conversation would go if I wound up sweating it out on his doorstep.
So, Cole, I get that Conquest enslaved you, slaughtered your people, and laid waste to your empire, but do you think I could rub against you for a little while? Just until my skin stops itching? What’s that? You can’t actually tell me no because of the whole enslavement thing? So I can use your back like a scratching post or nah?