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Evidently there were benefits to being infamous. I turned again and came to lean on the desk. “I was hoping to talk to Dr. Reynolds about—well, two things. First I wanted to know if they’ve examined the baseball bat Patty Raleigh attacked my partner with to see if it was the murder weapon, and then there was a dog attack downtown this morning I wanted to ask about.”

“I’m totally not supposed to tell you anything like this, but I got to observe part of the autopsy,” the girl said cheerfully. “If it wasn’t the murder weapon, then that poor guy got bashed in the head with a different baseball bat with a nail driven through it. They sent it to Forensics already to look for fingerprints and test the blood to match it against Mr. Raleigh’s, but I don’t think you’re going to have any problem going back on duty, Detective Walker. They’ll clear you for sure.”

It hadn’t occurred to me I might be asking because I was worried about returning to duty, but it was an excellent reason. Mostly I was backwardly justifying not healing Patricia Raleigh, though even if she hadn’t killed her husband, taking a swing at my partner was all the justification I needed. I cleared my throat. “Thanks. I don’t suppose you know anything about?—”

“The homeless guy? No, sorry. How come you’re looking into that? I thought you worked North Precinct.”

“He was a friend of a friend. Look, I know you’re not supposed to, but is there any chance you can let me know—or if you could get Dr. Reynolds to let me know—if there was any sign of rabies in the saliva from the attacking dog?”

The girl, who was probably really about my own age and not a girl at all, gave me a dour look. “It’ll be on the news tonight either way. If it’s rabid they’re going to tell people to watch out for it, if it’s not they’ll tell people not to worry. I’d worry anyway. Did you see what it did to that poor guy?”

I hadn’t, and so shook my head, which was apparently the response she wanted. “It was awful. It just about bit his head off. I’ve never seen a dog big enough to do that. Jeez, listen to me. It’s probably a good thing they won’t have me doing the news report, huh? Anyway, is there anything else I can help you with, Detective?”

“Sure,” I said, because what the hell, she was chatty and it never hurt to ask. “Did that dancer, Naomi Allison, come in last night? Have they done any work on her yet?”

“Oh, she got priority because she’s not local and her troupe’s supposed to leave Monday morning. The boss came in to look her over, it was so weird. But that’s all I know. They said it looked like her heart got ripped out or eaten or something. What is this, a horror movie? Like those zombies at Halloween. We keep ashotgunin the morgue now. Can you imagine?”

Creepy-crawlies crept up my spine. I hadn’t thought about what a morgue would be like during Seattle’s brief but extremely unpleasant flirtation with the walking dead. Probably not worse than the graveyard, but still bad enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. I was not good with the undead. “Actually, yes. I’m surprised you remember that.” People tended not to, or morespecifically, to attach some kind of mundane explanation to the utterly impossible. It was a sanity-saving measure.

My new friend evidently wasn’t overly concerned with how her sanity was perceived by others. “Kind of hard to forget when the fridge doors burst open and people you were just examining come crawling out. Everybody who was here went nuts trying to fight them. The boss chopped one of them up with ascalpel.Do you know how long that takes? I had a bonecutter, it worked better. But we don’t talk about it very much because who would believe us?” She gave me a suddenly suspicious look, like I’d deliberately drawn her out and would now mock her. I raised my hands and shook my head.

“Most people wouldn’t. I’m glad everybody here was okay.” I hesitated. “Everybody was okay, right?”

“Yeah.” She shivered, threw it off and launched in another direction: “Anyway, so the big boss looked at the dancer and you could see him thinking, everybody thinking, that it was something as freaky as the zombies, but who was gonna say that out loud? I don’t think they’re going to release her body before her troupe leaves. It’s too weird. They’re going to keep looking forwhyher heart’s gone. I hope they find some kind of acid attack or something. That would at least make sense.”

I crooked an unhappy smile. People by and large didn’t want to believe in magic, but there were at least a few of them out there who didn’t have inherent magic, and who still hunted things that went bump. This girl seemed like she could be one of them. I wondered what she’d say to that, but I’d learned my lesson: telling the truth just made people think I was crazy. Even somebody who’d fought zombies was probably unlikely to accept the truth. I’d had to, but I was sort of in a league of my own, and I’d gotten to where it all more or less made sense. “Unlike zombies.”

“Totally. So I wish I could be more help, but that’s all I know. And, um, Detective Walker? You won’t tell anybody I told you all that, right?”

“My lips are sealed. Thanks.” I went back out into the afternoon feeling more lighthearted, if no more illuminated about the status of any of the cases I was unofficially involved with.

Daylight made my eyes hurt, a shiny reminder that I hadn’t slept since the previous morning. I slumped in Petite’s driver seat, trying to think of anything at all I could do which would be useful on any of the cases, and woke up seventy minutes later when my cell phone blared its obnoxious ringtone through the car.

“Somebody called in for you,” my buddy Bruce from work informed my panicked grunt of a hello. “Said it was personal, so I thought I’d check to see if I should put it through. Her name’s Tia Carley.”

“Never heard of her,” I said tiredly. “Okay, put her through. Thanks, Bruce.”

“No problem.” The phone beeped twice, and then a woman’s vaguely familiar voice came over the line: “Miss Walker? Detective Walker, I should say?”

“Yeah.” Nobody called memiss, which triggered recognition. “Ms. Carley? From the dance concert?”

“That’s right!” Delight swept her voice. “I was afraid you wouldn’t remember me.”

“Did you know your name means ‘Aunt Carley’? Uh. I mean, I mean. Yeah. I remember who you are. I’m sorry, I just woke up.” I sat up, one hand knotted around the steering wheel, and blinked furiously at the world beyond Petite’s hood until my brain started to function a little better. “What can I do for you, Ms. Carley? Have you seen a doctor?” That seemed well-nigh impossible, since I’d only told her to the night before.

“Maybe let me buy you a cup of coffee, since I woke you up. And no, no, I haven’t, I can’t until Monday at the soonest, but I hoped you might not mind telling me a little more about what you did.”

I slumped deeper in Petite’s seat. “You can’t go to a doctor and tell them what I did, Ms. Carley. They’d never believe you.”

“Oh, I know. I want to know for myself. I don’t want to harass you, but I’d like to hear a little about what you do.”

“You’re not a reporter, are you, Ms. Carley?” I already had one reporter on my case, though that one had bitten off enough of my world to actually back away a bit. I didn’t need someone who wouldn’t.

“Please, call me Tia, and yes, I did know what my name means. My nieces call me Auntie Chuck, becauseCarleyis derived fromCharles.My family’s not normal,” she said cheerfully. “But I’m not a reporter, just someone who believes there’s more to this world than is dreamt of in most philosophies. Could I buy you a coffee, Detective?”

Gary had quoted that line the morning we’d met, and I’d used it on Rita Wagner just yesterday. At least, I thought it had been yesterday. Either way, its use disposed me more kindly toward Tia Carley. I breathed, “What the hell, I could use the caffeine,” and more clearly, said, “Yeah, okay, sure. Where can I meet you?”

“I’m downtown right now. At the Elliott Bay Bookstore, maybe?”