Cerulean Sins

He closed the manila envelope and handed it to me. "To solve a crime."

"Solving these crimes would add to your unit's clout. Last time we spoke you needed that clout."

He was looking at me carefully.

"Are you here officially, Bradley?"

"Yes."

I stared into his bland face. "Are you here officially just as an FBI agent?"

"Don't know what you mean."

"You told me once that I'd come to the attention of some of the less savory branches of our government, the spooks, I think you called them. Is Van Anders a spook?"

"No government in their right mind would want an animal like this in their country."

"Talk to me, Bradley, talk to me, or the next time we meet I'm not going to trust you like I do right this minute."

He sighed and suddenly looked tired. He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "These murders were brought to our attention. But I'd seen crimes like this before. In a different country, in a place where the government was more worried about staying in power than protecting helpless women." There was a look in his eyes, something faraway, and pain-filled.

"You said you got out of that line of work."

"I did." He looked very steadily at me, no cop eyes now. "Men like Van Anders were one of the reasons I couldn't keep doing it. But when certain people found out that Van Anders might actually have been let loose within the confines of the United States, they weren't happy. I have a one time permission to help things along here."

"What's the price tag on this help?"

"Heinrick will be escorted out of the country. They'll never put a name to the second man he was taken in with. It will all disappear."

"Heinrick is a suspected terrorist. You think that they'll just let him walk?"

"He's wanted in five different countries that we have strong treaties with. Who do we give him to, Anita? Better to just let him go."

"Don't you want to know why he was in town? I know I want to know why he was following me."

"I told you why these kind of people would want you."

"So I can raise the dead for them. A political leader here, a few zombie bodyguards there," I tried to make a joke of it, but Bradley wasn't laughing.

"You know the man you found nailed to his living room wall?"

"Yeah."

"He knew Heinrick and Van Anders, and he felt that they were too extreme. He left and he hid, but not well enough."

"If it was an execution, why make it look like some sort of ritual murder?"

"So it wouldn't look like an execution."

"Why did they care?" I asked.

He shook his head. "It was a message, Anita. They wanted him dead, and they wanted him dead in such a way that it would be sensational enough to make headlines. They wanted his death out there for all the others like him, like me, that left."

"You don't know this for sure, Bradley."

"Not all of it, but I know that everyone involved wants Van Anders caught, and Heinrick gone."

"What about the others?"

"I don't know."

"Are they gone for good, or should I still be worried?"

"Be worried, Anita, I would be."

"Great." Something occurred to me. "I know this is all off the record for you. Well, I've got one thing off the record to ask you."

"I can't promise, but what is it?"

I gave him Leo Harlan's name, and a general description, because it's not that hard to change your name. "He says he's an assassin, and I believe him. He says he's here on a sort of vacation, and I believe that, too. But St. Louis is suddenly lousy with internationally wanted bad guys, and I'd be curious to know if my client is tied to them somehow."

"I'll check around."

"If he comes up on any of your hit parades, I'll avoid him, and refuse to raise his ancestor. If he doesn't, I'll do the job."

"Even though he's an assassin?"

I shrugged. "Who am I to throw stones, Bradley? I try not to judge people more than I have to."

"Or maybe you're getting more comfortable with murderers."

"Yeah, all my friends are either criminals, monsters, or cops."

That made him smile.

Zerbrowski yelled from downstairs. "Anita, yo, we're out of here."

I gave Bradley my cell phone number. He copied it down. I ran for the stairs.

56

O'Brien had started the interrogation before we got there. People in St. Louis didn't seem to understand that sirens and lights on a police car meant get the fuck out of the way. It was almost as if the police car with all flags flying made a gawkers' block around us. The drivers were so busy trying to figure out why we were in such a rush that they forgot to get out of the way.

I had never seen Zerbrowski so angry. Hell, I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him angry. Not for real. He'd raised enough of a fuss to drag O'Brien out of the interrogation, but she kept saying, "You can have him when we're through with him, Sergeant."

Zerbrowski's voice had crawled down so low it was almost painful to listen to it. That dragging, careful voice held enough heat to make me nervous. O'Brien didn't seem impressed.

"Don't you think, detective, that questioning him about a serial killer that's already butchered three, maybe four people, takes precedent over questioning him about following a federal marshal?"

"I am questioning him about the serial killer." A small frown formed between her eyes. "What do you mean three, maybe four?"

"We haven't finished counting the pieces at the last crime scene. There may be two victims."

"You can't tell?" she asked.

He let out his breath in a loud humph of air. "You don't know anything about these crimes. You don't know enough to be questioning him without us," His voice shook with the effort not to start screaming at her.

"Maybe you can sit in, sergeant, but not her." She jerked a thumb in my direction.

"Actually, detective, technically, you can't exclude me from the interrogation now that Heinrick is a suspect in preternatural crimes."

O'Brien looked at me, a blank, unfriendly stare. "I excluded you just fine before, Blake."

"Ah," I said, and felt myself smiling, I couldn't help it. "But that was when Heinrick was a suspected terrorist, and guilty of nothing more than illegal weapons violations, very mundane stuff. And nothing that my federal marshal status puts under my jurisdiction. As you pointed out earlier I'm not a regular federal marshal. My jurisdiction is very narrow. I have no legal status on nonpreternatural crimes, but on preternatural crimes I have jurisdiction all across this country. I don't have to wait to be invited in." I know I looked smug when I finished, but I just couldn't seem to help myself. O'Brien was being pissy, and pissiness should be punished.

O'Brien looked like she'd bitten into something bitter. "This is my case."

"Actually, O'Brien, it's everybody's case now. Mine, because federal law gives me the jurisdiction. Zerbrowski, because it's a preternatural case, and that means it belongs to the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. Truthfully, you have no jurisdiction on the murders. They didn't happen on your turf, and you wouldn't even have known that Heinrick was involved if we hadn't shared information so freely with you."

"We played fair with you," Zerbrowski said, "play fair with us, and we all win." His voice was almost normal. He'd lost that frightening bass.

She pointed a finger at me, rather dramatically, I thought. "But it'll be her name in the paper."

I shook my head. "Jesus, O'Brien, is that all this is about? You want your name in the headlines?"

"I know that cracking a serial murder could make me a sergeant."

"If you want your name on this case, fine," I said, "but let's worry more about solving the case than who's going to get credit for it."