“I can’t speak,” I said. “You don’t want to hear that I knew nothing about this poor twerp, but that’s all I can tell you about him.”
The sergeant told his team to secure the crime scene for the evidence techs. He took me back to the station for a heart-to-heart. While I huddled, shivering and sneezing—and eyeing my mud-stained evening dress in dismay—someone phoned with the victim’s identity. Miles Wuchnik, he’d been when he was alive. And, like me, an investigator. Anstey couldn’t believe I didn’t know him.
“Sergeant, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of investigators in Illinois. Most are not detectives—they just do research for law firms or work in security.”
Anstey ignored that answer and started to imagine a scenario where Wuchnik had been muscling in on one of my clients and I’d murdered him to get him out of the way.
I rolled my eyes. “First you wanted us to be drug dealers who’d fallen out, or lovers having a quarrel. Now, at least, you’re respecting my professional status, but your theory is still a million miles from reality.”
I sneezed again. “You’ve got your air-conditioning turned on too high. Save the city a dime, save the planet, turn it down. I’m freezing. If that’s the best you can do, I’m out of here.”
He didn’t try to stop me; he probably didn’t even really suspect me. He just was hoping the murder would solve itself for him, and I was handy.
No one offered me a ride back to my car, but they didn’t tail me, either, so I walked straight to the Dudek apartment.
3.
BEDTIME STORIES
WHEN I RANG THE BELL AT THE DUDEK PLACE, PETRA CAME down to let me in. I’d called her right after I’d sent the girls over the cemetery wall, warning her of the imminent arrival of the gang of seven, and telling her not to let them leave unless she inspected their escort.
“Vic! Thank God you’re here. Tyler is the only one who showed up, besides Kira, I mean. What happened to the others? Kira said she didn’t care if the rest all ended up in jail, but where did they go?”
“I don’t know.” My eyes widened in dismay. “Have you texted them?”
“They’re not answering. Anyway, I’m not sure who all was there—Arielle Zitter, I know, and if she was there, Nia was with her, but I don’t know the names of the other three. Tyler, all she does is cry and say how her dad will beat her up, and then Kira says, well, at least you’ve got a dad, and they start in on each other.”
I shut my eyes for a moment, hoping that when I opened them I’d be home in bed, waking up from a dream. Unfortunately, when I looked around, I was still in the ill-lit foyer, my eyeballs aching and scratchy. My seven dwarfs: Achy, Scratchy, Cranky, Crabby, Grim, Truculent, and Bellicose.
“I was trying to spare them being picked up on a curfew violation, not to mention giving them a chance to talk to their folks about this escapade first,” I explained as I followed my cousin up the stairs. “Are those girls good enough friends that they would all stay together? That would keep them safe on the street, even if the police nail them.”
The door to an apartment at the top of the stairs opened. A man stuck his head out and hissed at us to keep it down, people were trying to sleep. I felt jealous of anyone with the luxury of trying to sleep right now, but I smiled contritely and tiptoed behind Petra to the end of the hall, where she pushed open the door to the Dudek apartment.
A little girl in a yellow-flowered nightgown was standing next to a narrow couch, crying. I supposed that was Lucy, whose call to Petra had set my night in motion. Next to Lucy, not looking at her sister—or, indeed, at anyone—was Kira Dudek, the girl with the long, fair hair I’d seen at the cemetery.
The new initiate, Tyler, sat across the room at a small table that seemed to double as a desk—it held books and a computer as well as the remains of dinner. Both girls had changed from their wet clothes into dry shorts and T-shirts. Tyler looked at the open door with some alarm, but Kira didn’t even move her head when Petra and I came in.
The couch, the table, and four laminate chairs pretty well filled the room, although the couch faced a wall unit holding a modest television and four or five shelves of books. An icon to the Virgin above the couch and a crucifix on the wall behind the table made up the Dudek family’s art collection.
It was a small room, too small for the tension between the girls. Petra ignored the older two and made a beeline for Lucy, who grabbed my cousin’s leg. With that anchor, she felt safe enough to stop crying and stare at me to see what new drama I was bringing to the night.
I pulled a chair away from the table and placed it halfway between Tyler and Kira. “Okay, my sisters: it’s time you started talking. What was going on tonight?”
“Nothing,” Kira muttered.
“Only it was ‘nothing’ in the middle of a graveyard during a thunderstorm. This was an initiation into the cult of Carmilla—”