30. Diem

30

Diem

“ W e should make a murder board, like the ones they use in police dramas,” Tallus said once he’d scarfed his food. I had a feeling it was the first time he’d eaten all day. In fact, something told me his meals were sporadic at best.

“We don’t need a murder board, and stop watching that shit on TV. It’s not real, and it makes you reckless.”

“I’m not reckless. I’m proactive. I don’t like sitting around. I’m a doer. A go-getter. In fact, we should go see Hilty again. Tell him we know he’s been working covertly with Rowena. We could shake him up. Rattle his cage. Go all Marlon Brando in The Godfather on him. You can wear your fedora and trench coat and—”

“No.”

“Ah, come on. Why not? It could be fun. I want to see that old bastard shit his pants.”

“The only proof we have are illegally obtained copies of his files.” I shoved the stack of prints I’d made at Tallus, who sat on the other side of the desk. “ We’re the criminals at this point.”

He picked up the prints and went through them, defeated and sulky.

After a time, as I ate my dinner at a slower rate than he’d hoovered his, the pout vanished and turned questioning, his sculpted brows meeting in the middle.

“What?”

“Why do you think Hilty got angry with Rowena after our visit? I mean, I get that we unsettled him by suggesting we knew he was still associated with his ex-wife, but why storm over to her place and go ballistic? Why take these files back? If they were working together, then why did he seem so distressed? It doesn’t make sense.”

He was right. I set my fork down and watched as Tallus pensively flipped through the copies of the files. He was onto something.

“See? You’re smart when you slow down. You need to learn to use that brain and stop going off half-cocked.”

He peered over the brim of his come-fuck-me glasses, sultry mischief shining from his hazel irises. “Anyone can be ordinary, Guns. I prefer to keep you on your toes. Besides, I think you like me half-cocked.” He winked.

I stuttered and shoved food in my mouth to hide my unsteadiness.

Tallus, seemingly amused I was flustered, refocused on the prints. “Hilty took these files from his ex and went to his office in the middle of the night, where he spent hours stewing over them. Hours, Guns. He didn’t drop them off. He didn’t take them home. The man was borderline unstable. You said so yourself.”

“Yeah.” I’d spied him through the window that night.

“Either…” Tallus paused as though running a new idea around his brain before speaking it out loud. His eyes went out of focus, flicking side to side behind his glasses as though playing out a scenario. “Either he was terrified we knew some deep dark secret about him—”

“Like murder.”

“Yes, like murder, or…” Tallus fanned through the pages, frowning. “Or… Oh shit.”

“What? Or what?”

Tallus tossed the stack on the desk and shimmied his chair closer. “Or he didn’t know about them at all.”

I glanced from Tallus to the papers he was frantically organizing across the desk.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, setting my plate aside.

“Where’s that card?”

“What card?”

“The appointment card Sally Soape Opera wrote for us when she tried to get rid of us. I took it. I put it in my pocket. Did I put it in my pocket?”

Tallus flew off the chair and spun in a confused circle as though he didn’t know which way to go. “My car. The cup holder. I always throw loose junk in the cup holder. Hang on. I’ll be back.”

“Tallus—”

He was out the door before I could get a word in, slamming it behind him. A crash sounded. Tallus cursed. The door opened, and he poked his head in. “I may have broken your sign even more. I’m sorry.”

Cringing, he kicked the plastic remains inside the door, offered an apologetic grimace, and left.

Stupid fucking piece of junk sign.

I examined the pages Tallus had spread out, not following his train of thought. I circled the desk, studying them from every angle, stopping on the opposite side where Tallus had stood to get his point of view.

Still nothing.

Where was he going with this?

What did he mean, Hilty didn’t know? Didn’t know what?

Tallus was back in less than five minutes, huffing and puffing. “I hate stairs. Why… can’t you… have an office on the first floor? Or an elevator that isn’t… reminiscent of The Shining .” He blew out his cheeks and rattled his head. “Okay. I’m okay.” Then he flapped a card in my face. “Look. I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

“Knew what?” I took the card as Tallus stood poised with his hands on his hips as though it alone solved the mystery. Cheeks flush from exertion, chest still heaving, it was hard not to smile. The man had been a distraction since day one.

“Guns! The card.”

I stared at the card, at Tallus, and back at the card. Struggling to focus, I shook my head. “I’m not following.”

“Look at the handwriting.”

In flowing cursive, Sally had written Monday, September 9 th on the card. That had been before we’d refused the appointment slot, insisting she immediately let us in to see Hilty.

I studied the writing and shifted my attention from the card to the spread of prints and back. “I’m still not—”

It hit me. I saw what Tallus saw, and he was right.

The character assessment notes, the ones written on sticky tabs, the ones we’d assumed Hilty had done for Rowena’s benefit, were in the same script as the appointment card. The doctor hadn’t written them. Sally had. And if Sally had written the character assessments, it wasn’t impossible to believe she had given the files to Rowena, not the doctor. In all likelihood, Hilty had known nothing about them until we’d shown up and stirred the pot.

It was why he’d spent a whole night in distress.

It was why the files he’d retrieved had been photocopies. The originals were likely stored in a locked cabinet in his office where he’d assumed they were safe.

It was why the only fresh ink on the pages themselves was the black Sharpie written by Hilty after he’d retrieved the stolen files from Rowena. He’d spent that long night researching his old clients and had discovered a haunting truth.

Almost half of them were dead.

Of course Hilty wouldn’t go to the police. He would be implicated. He had ties to Rowena. They were his clients. His files. Plus, like us, he probably didn’t have a fucking clue how his psycho ex-wife was doing it.

“You see it now?” Tallus asked.

“Yeah.”

“We need to talk to Hilty.”

“No.”

Tallus threw his hands up. “Why? I feel like this is one of those times you’re being disagreeable for the sake of it. We need him on our side. He could help.”

“Slow down and think, Tallus.” The words came out too harshly, but he was good at this, and if he learned to slow the fuck down, he could be better. “What do you hope to learn from Hilty? Are you going to tell him we broke into his office and copied his files? We’re the ones who will end up behind bars.”

Less haughty, Tallus conceded and paced. I dug through my desk, wishing I had a stray piece of gum kicking around. I couldn’t think straight. The cigarette craving I’d been trying to ignore itched under my skin.

Relenting, I grabbed the red rubber stress ball and squeezed it several times before remembering the tea I’d gotten from Janek. Fucking tea.

I threw the ball back into the drawer and went into the other room. I didn’t own a kettle, so I found a small pot and filled it with water, putting it on the hot plate I used instead of a stove.

Tallus followed, studying the stack of prints. He stopped by Baby’s terrarium and glared with hostility at the reptile stretched long against the front glass, not doing a thing to offend him except existing.

“Are we still good?” he asked the snake. “We had a deal, remember? She’s out of her log,” he said to me.

“She’s hungry.”

“Great. I love it when you starve a man-eating boa.” Tallus took a seemingly unconscious step back. “When does she eat?”

“Tomorrow if I can get to the store.”

“Fabulous.” To Baby, he said, “Can you hold off one day? If not, I’ll send him to the store right now.”

I found one of the packages of ginseng tea Janek had sold me and scowled at the list of ingredients on the back. What the fuck was skullcap? It sounded poisonous. Did I trust this woman? Had she lied to me?

“I swear to god, if this shit doesn’t work, I’m taking the whole lot of it to the dumpster, and Janek is going to refund me my eighty-seven dollars, or she’ll see what homicidal looks like.”

Abandoning Baby, Tallus smirked as he approached and peered at the bag of bullshit tea.

“Do you want one?” I asked, finding a ceramic mug.

“No thank you. It sounds horrid. I’ll stick to lattes.”

I grunted and fiddled with the contraption Janek had sold me for filtering the tea leaves because the manufacturers couldn’t be bothered to put them in those disposable ones like Nana drank. Instead, I had to use a spherical stainless steel reusable thing with a fancy fucking chain and a dove on the end. The ball came apart to be filled, and it took a second to figure out how. I poured the tea leaves into the open half and secured it before bringing it to my nose and sniffing. It already smelled like fucking feet. Great.

Tallus helped himself to a bottle of water in the fridge and wandered to the couch, flopping down and looking defeated. He drank and flipped through the printed files. “I don’t know what to do from here, Guns. Help me out. I need your wisdom.”

The water came to a boil, so I poured it into the mug. Wet, the leaves took on a gag-worthy stench, and I wrinkled my nose. This was going to be terrible. I bobbed the fake teabag in the hot water, watching the infusion, wondering if its supposed properties would be as effective if I made the tea weak. Janek had suggested two to five minutes, but I couldn’t stand how it looked and smelled.

Begrudgingly, I let it sit. My craving was too intense to play games.

Tallus glanced over the back of the loveseat. “You said Sandra, aka Sally, or whoever was not financially stable, right? She filed for bankruptcy, and that’s why you think she changed her identity?”

I grunted, half listening, still making faces at the tea.

“So, it’s possible Rowena, who knew how to steal identities, helped her get set up.”

With another distracted grunt, I removed the stainless-steel contraption and set it aside. I sniffed the witchy potion again, wondering what had happened to me to make me resort to herbal teas in place of cigarettes. Where was the man who didn’t give a fuck? Who frequently flew into violent rages. Who drank, smoked, cruised Spark, and got into bar fights. Where was the man who refused to socialize and preferred isolation? Who worked alone, no matter what?

Now, I was having tea parties and discussing cases with a guy who had become a regular… lover. It was hardly the right word. Lover implied mutual companionship and mutual enjoyment, and thus far, I failed to give Tallus either of those things. What I offered was a half-satisfactory, impersonal fuck, a whole lot of nonsense, and headaches. Never mind the baggage I lugged around.

His words to Memphis came back to me. Tallus had made a bet. A bet he’d lost. A bet he’d been so sure about. I recalled the disappointment in his tone when he’d said it wasn’t meant to be—implying he wanted it.

It made no sense.

Why me? What could he possibly see in a guy like me?

“Guns? You aren’t listening. Are you reading the tea leaves or something? I think you’re supposed to drink it first before you can do that.”

I rattled the maudlin thoughts away and brought the mug to the loveseat, still unsure about the tea’s smell.

“Do you think Sally helped get those files to Rowena because she owed her or because Rowena was paying for a service?”

“I don’t know.” Warily, I sipped the tea. The second it hit my palate, I spat it right back into the mug. “Holy fucking Christ, that tastes like swamp-ass.”

Tallus smirked. “Money well spent?”

I set the mug aside, snarling at it and scraping my teeth along my tongue to eliminate the awful taste. “Disgusting.”

I had no beer, no cigarettes, and negligible sanity remaining. I couldn’t think straight.

“You all right, Guns?”

“No. I need gum… or something.” I needed a forty of liquor and a pack of Players. I needed to stop thinking about what Tallus wanted from me and focus on this godforsaken case.

“Give me a sec.” I went to my partitioned-off bedroom and rooted in a few drawers. There had to be a pack of gum somewhere. I’d even take a hard candy at this point. Sugar helped sometimes.

As I searched, a knock sounded at the door.

I froze, instantly on alert. What time was it? Late. Too late. After hours late.

“I’ll get it,” Tallus called.

A chill raced up my spine. A premonition. An omen. A sick sense of foreboding.

But when I gathered my senses and realized something wasn’t right, I was too late to stop him.