CHAPTER 28
MORGUES WERE ALWAYS in
basements, Laura thought as she stepped out of the elevator. The
dead didn’t need sunlight. The living didn’t want to be disturbed
by their presence. Between the InterSec offices and the local Guild
crime-liaison department, the Guildhouse’s morgue was larger than
other fey facilities. The Guild and InterSec used separate staff to
perform autopsies and forensics. What redundancies the situation
created was balanced by less friction over who had priority on
research staff.
Laura Blackstone had never had a reason to be seen
in the morgue, which made transitioning to Mariel Tate necessary
after returning from seeing Cress. Mariel didn’t attract undue
attention there by her mere presence. Part of her job was following
up on deaths. People did look at her, though. That was one of the
points in making the Mariel glamour so attractive—to distract from
whatever she was doing. It worked most of the time.
She pushed open the door to the cool room. That
late in the day, no one was working, and the lights were dimmed. As
she moved toward Sean Carr’s locker, she stopped. Her mnemonic
memory worked on several levels, recording body signatures, data,
events, and places. Things like places logged themselves into her
memory like subroutines, something she didn’t consciously do and
didn’t pay attention to most of the time. When she entered the cool
room, on a subconscious level, her awareness noted several changes,
changes that were filtered as normal and disregarded. Gurneys had
been moved. Counters cleared. The lights, of course.
Except one thing flared out in her memory as out of
place. In the kick space in front of the cooler sat a small granite
plate. To the casual eye, it appeared innocuous, a forgotten piece
of discarded stone on the floor and swept out of view. Laura saw it
for what it was: a listening ward. Someone was keeping tabs on who
entered the room. If that was the case, she didn’t want anyone to
know she was looking at the body.
She retraced her steps and texted Sinclair to meet
her. As she lingered near the elevators, she used her PDA to catch
up on public-relations emails until Sinclair arrived. He made a
show of looking up and down the hallway. “Not the dinner spot I was
hoping for.”
“I need your help with something,” she said.
He feigned surprise. “My help? Me? If this is about
changing a lightbulb because I’m taller than you, I’ll be very
disappointed.”
She led him down the hallway. “Not a lightbulb, but
I’ll keep that in mind. Follow me.”
“Anywhere,” he said.
Her fear that he was able to mask his truthfulness
through some ability she didn’t know warred with her desire to
believe him. The desire was winning out over the fear more and more
lately. She was starting to think that wasn’t a bad thing. She
stopped shy of the door to the examining room. Can you pull out your medallion for me? she
sent.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Is that what we’re
calling it now?”
Although it wasn’t the time for jokes, she realized
that it was the perfect time for Sinclair. His joking was a mask,
she decided, a way of glossing over the seriousness of a situation.
She, of all people, knew about masks. She glowered playfully and
held her fingers to his lips. There’s a
listening ward in the room, she sent.
Sinclair threaded his medallion from beneath his
shirt. The metal held an odd coolness, unwarmed by his skin.
Essence burned both hot and cold depending on how it was used.
Laura didn’t understand the spell that suppressed Sinclair’s fey
essence, but she had been able to enhance it before. She pushed
essence into the medallion. Her skin prickled as the spell expanded
to cover her, too.
Sinclair smirked. “You made it bigger.”
Ignoring the comment, she released the medallion.
“I need you to stand near the listening ward to dampen it.”
She opened a door in the wall of coolers and rolled
out a long metal shelf. Sean Carr lay on the shelf, a thin white
sheet covering him to the waist. Cress’s stasis spell surrounded
him, already weakening. Laura estimated it would be gone within a
day and with it any trace of essence-related evidence.
The spell prevented his wings from curling inward.
They lay flat to either side, a tattered hole in the left one near
the shoulder. A cratered burn mark on his chest splayed out like a
bloody star against his pale skin. Laura lifted her gaze to see
Sinclair’s reaction. He leaned against a counter on the opposite
side of the table, posture relaxed, arms folded against his
chest.
She lifted the shroud, the stark white overhead
lamps accentuating Carr’s pale skin. Carr might have been a failed
assassin, but Laura still respected the dead. Playful banter with
Sinclair could wait. She pulled on latex gloves and handed Sinclair
a pair. “Can you hold up a wing for me?”
The thin appendage draped over his fingers as
Sinclair lifted the soft folds. Laura scanned the drab mauve
surface, searching for anomalies. Fairy wings were resilient to
incidental injuries, but essence could damage them.
“What are you looking for?” Sinclair asked.
“Cress wanted me to get body-signature imprints
before they faded.”
The dead man’s body signature shone as Inverni a
day after his death. Not a surprise for a member of a powerful
group, even if he was from a subclan. She gestured for Sinclair to
move closer. “Do you sense anything here?”
“Just the guy’s shape. There are layers of other
essence on him, but they mean nothing to me.”
She moved her hand along Carr’s body, sensing
residual essence. “They’re multiple body signatures, likely
contaminants from the way he was brought in.”
“Sounds like poor procedure to me,” said
Sinclair.
Laura sensed her own essence on the body. “Agreed.
This wing burn is mine. I’m getting a nice strong tag on the kill
shot. That will help identify the killer once we have someone in
custody.”
As Sinclair released the wing and adjusted it along
the rolling slab, Laura started to push the body into the locker
but paused. This close to the body, her sensing ability picked up
nuances in Carr’s body signature. The strength of the field didn’t
surprise her. As an Inverni, that was a given. She leaned closer.
Still nothing. “There’s nothing there.”
Laura lifted Carr’s hands and scanned them.
“There’s gunshot residue from firing at Draigen, but there’s no
residual essence concentration in his hands. Essence-fire pools on
the skin surface before it discharges. It leaves a ghost image
behind, like gunshot residue. There’s no afterimage in these
hands.”
“So?” asked Sinclair.
“He didn’t fire essence at whoever killed him,
Jono.”
Sinclair met her gaze. “Which means he was either
surrendering or wasn’t expecting to be fired on because he knew the
fey who shot him.”
Laura pulled the shroud back over Carr and pushed
the slab back into the locker. “Either way, Jono, it means he was
murdered.”