Chapter Twenty-two

The moon was rising through the tall windows of the detectives’ bureau. The glass bricks of the lower floors glowed pale green.

Hunched at his work pod, Garrett had been staring at the Missing Persons reports for some time now, as if a name would somehow miraculously appear on the dates he was checking. There was nothing. There simply were no missing persons on or around the dates Tanith had given him.

But her voice kept insisting.

“There are three dead already.”

And the sweet, haunting lyrics of Jason’s song to Erin refused to go away.

Garrett stood and walked down the back stairs (the DNA stairs, he always thought of them, the double spiral staircase in the back of Schroeder), with the tall clear glass windows looking out onto the darkened adjoining strip of park, and crossed the lobby to the complaint desk, where walk-ins and call-ins could make reports. The desk was generally staffed by rookies or even cadets, and rookies made mistakes.

He was in luck; tonight there was an actual sergeant behind the desk, with a crew cut and handlebar mustache. Garrett leaned in to the counter. “I need to know if any missing persons were reported on or around these dates.” He passed the sergeant a Post-it with the dates June 21 and August 1. “Anything around those dates.” He paused, then took a shot. “I’m thinking it would be a young woman.” Garrett had meant that the report would be about a missing young woman, but the desk sergeant misunderstood.

“Yeah, a streetwalker did come in—August one sounds right. Said a friend of hers never came back from a date.”

Garrett stared at him, fury building. “Where the fuck is the report?”

The sergeant’s guard went way up and Garrett knew he had to contain himself if he was going to get what he needed.

“She didn’t fill one out. She came in less than twenty-four hours after this hooker ‘disappeared.’ I told her we couldn’t take a report on an adult until forty-eight hours had passed.” The sergeant shrugged, defensive. “She never came back in.”

All kinds of bells were going off inside Garrett. Tanith Cabarrus was right—there was another. A prostitute. And he’d initially thought the killer might have mistaken Erin for a prostitute. He felt a building rage that none of this had been recorded and that he had been a breath away from missing it entirely.

“I need a name. A description,” he ground out.

The sergeant bristled. “She was a hooker,” he said, as if that covered everything. “Eighteen, nineteen. Using, twitchy. Wig and dark glasses, like she was in disguise. Said her and her friend were working Chinatown.” Then something flickered in his face. “She had a food name . . .” he paused, thinking. “Bree. She said her name was Bree.”

A couple of years back Garrett had dated a vice cop named Stoney—Melissa Stone. Her name conjured a rush of erotic flashbacks: fucking in backseats; up against the rough brick wall of an alley; Garrett standing, shaking, sweating, Stoney on her knees, wide lips wrapped around him; Garrett’s fingers up inside her and Stoney shuddering as he pressed against her from behind . . .

She’d been working undercover in the BPD’s “Operation Squeeze”: an aggressive series of busts of prostitutes and johns in the gentrifying Chinatown district. When Garrett was being honest with himself he had to admit it gave him an illicit thrill to hook up with a pretend hooker. Landauer had taunted him unmercifully and Stoney was no fool, either; she’d called him on it, Garrett was unable to deny the charge, and ultimately Stoney couldn’t get past it. The problem with dating a cop was that they read you too well.

All of that played for a moment on Stoney’s face when she looked up from her desk in the vice squad room and saw him coming. Garrett was selfishly gratified to see an involuntary ripple of attraction as well, her own rush of erotic memories, quickly covered.

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms as he stopped in front of the desk. “So you finally caught your big one,” she said, as if no time had passed.

“Yeah. And now I’m hoping it’s not even bigger than everyone thinks.” He said it bluntly and the change in her eyes made it clear she understood he wasn’t playing. She sat up straighter.

“What’s up?”

He stepped close to the desk and lowered his voice. “I need to find someone. Fast. A streetwalker named Bree, eighteen, nineteen years old, working Chinatown. Has a hooker friend who went missing in August, probably her same age.”

Stoney’s eyes darkened. “Jesus. I never heard about it—”

“Wasn’t reported.”

“But it’s connected to yours?” she asked uneasily.

“I don’t know yet. I’ve got to find this girl,” he said, and met her gaze. She looked away from his eyes.

“I’ll put the word out,” she said. “Your cell the same?”

“Yeah. I owe you, Stoney.”

“Yeah—you do,” she said. And from the flatness in her voice Garrett knew that he was not forgiven, and he was only lucky that Stoney was a good cop and would put that first.

A lead. Maybe a lead.

But the churning in his stomach made him think that this was a door he didn’t want to open.

______

In a ritual triangle, lit by flame, a shadow figure held a dagger up in the wavering yellow light. The voice was low and husky as it intoned the Latin words. “Choronzon, acerbus et ingens! Cede pectares cras nocte sumendus, alere flamman tuam. Do et dus. Date et dabitur vobis! Abyssus Abyssum invocat!”

The robed figure cast a parchment inscribed with the triangle sigils into the fire. Then the figure turned to the altar—to the severed head on the plate. And as the cloaked figure muttered in a building frenzy, the head’s eyes snapped open . . . and stared.