Page 19 of Capitol Matters (Marionette #2)

After three days of apologies and excuses for my sudden disappearance, Holland seemed to have forgiven me. But, even with the investigator back on my side, I still had her father to contend with.

That was where I found myself Friday afternoon: summoned to Maximus Lyle’s office for an impromptu, and definitely off the books, meeting.

I sat cross-legged in one of the tufted leather guest chairs. Behind me, Maximus stood before the fireplace, watching the dancing flames.

“You’ve had a productive few weeks,” the older man began. “Earthquakes, bank robberies and, of course, your extracurricular activities…” He hummed a thoughtful sound. “Tell me, are you enjoying your time in the Capitol’s employ?”

Fishing into my jacket’s inner pocket, I pulled out a notepad. The investigators carried them for taking notes. I used mine to make origami .

“The paycheck’s nice,” I said. “I like the way I look in a suit. And I’m rarely bored, which is probably for the best. Idle hands and all.” I tore a sheet from the pad and leaned over Maximus’s desk, folding it then dragging my thumbnail along the creases for added crispness.

The three surviving kidnapping victims remained at Lock n’ Roll. Grimm and Donovan had schemed and, whatever solution they’d come up with, Donovan refused to share it with me. I took that as a sign it wouldn’t hold up to the scrutiny he expected me to bring. Which was fine, as long as it was also fine that I didn’t bring anyone else to the storage units. I was taking a hiatus from abductions. Indefinitely.

Maximus continued to fiddle with the fire. Like Grimm, he possessed a less obvious magical gift. One well-suited to politics and discussions like this one, where it wasn’t only the heat from the burning logs that had me fighting off sweat.

Maximus was an empath. Almost as bad as brain-raping telepaths but worse for me. I could block thought probes with the best of them, but my head had never ruled my heart as well as I wished it would, making my tenuous emotional state a playground for a savvy empath.

I imagined that was what the old man was doing now. Looking busy while getting his hooks in me, readying for when the small talk ended, and the real discussion began.

“Holland thinks quite highly of you,” he said.

I didn’t buy that. Between my bouts of groveling, the lady investigator seemed to find me a nuisance despite having given me a license to kill. Okay, she’d very specifically not given me a license to kill but, if we found ourselves in a situation where she flinched, and I didn’t… we’d already proven she couldn’t stay mad at me for saving her life.

Tucking in the last fold on a paper crane, I raised it in my palm. A nudging thought prompted it to shiver and stretch its angular wings. With a couple of test flaps, it took to the air, rising in slow circles to coast overhead.

Maximus turned and reached toward the bird as I steered it to land in his hand.

“Some people call that papermancy,” I said.

Maximus blinked at the origami creation.

“For someone who benefitted so heavily from his abilities being called into question, you seem determined to remove all doubt,” he said in a suddenly severe tone. “I heard about what you did at the bank. Making the men turn their guns on each other. There were witnesses, Fitch. Several of them.” His fingers closed around the bird, crumpling it. “It’s forbidden, what you’re doing. You must know that.”

“I thought it was the kind of firepower the Capitol wanted on their side,” I shot back.

He huffed a breath and tossed the paper wad into the flames. “Discreetly, perhaps. But I’m beginning to gather you’re no master of that.”

Emotions were brewing. Nothing damning yet, but I didn’t put it past the old man to read me like a lie detector given the chance.

I shifted my attention to the objects on his desk. A perpetual motion machine occupied the corner nearest me: a metal wheel with marbles between each spoke. A slight mental prodding started it spinning.

“However,” Maximus continued, “there is something about which you’ve been more discreet than I expected.”

“And what might that be?”

If he dragged this on much longer, I might start rearranging his shelves.

“Four influential people have gone missing in recent days,” the old man said. “No evidence to speak of. No bodies found, even two weeks after the initial disappearance.”

There had been a body, all right. Yankee Doodle was served over ice to a hungry zombie seventy-two hours earlier. The irony was almost enough to make me laugh when Maximus concluded, “Not to call your efforts into question or your methods. But I would like to see some proof.”

“Proof of death?” I asked, unsure whether I should fight the smirk tempting my lips.

It was unsettling to have him lurking over my shoulder, refusing to sit and face me. It left me vulnerable and open to attack, though that was the least likely thing a man like Maximus would do.

“You want an ear?” I asked. “A finger? Or the whole kit and caboodle?”

A check of Maximus’s expression found it scathing.

“I’ll leave that to your discretion,” he said. “But I do want it to be identifiable.”

Which ruled out the nonlethal options.

I’d all but granted the remaining four people a reprieve. Time to revisit my notes and decide which of them I liked the least. Surely there was a wife beater or sexual predator on the list. Politicians got up to all sorts of scandal. I could deliver vigilante justice and feel good about myself until I had to set up a clean room and buy a chainsaw.

“Yeah,” I said at length. “I can do that.”

Maximus dipped his head. “Then that will be all, Mister Farrow.”

I left Maximus’s office only to be nabbed by Jacoby Thatcher a few dozen feet down the hall. He had his own office that he pushed me into, then closed and locked the door behind.

This room was modest, speaking volumes about Thatcher’s position near the top of the Capitol’s food chain, but still falling short. It must have eaten Grimm alive seeing the lavish spread in Maximus’s private chambers, then be relegated to this mediocre space.

It was decorated, which was more than could be said about Holland’s sterile space. But, like his home, Thatcher’s office lacked personality. It had the token desk and chairs and a large television mounted on the opposite wall. A few faux plants and a standing lamp were scattered about.

Tugging on the sleeves of his plaid suit jacket, Grimm—Thatcher—faced me.

Considering that he had not approached me once in the two weeks I’d been at the Capitol, this aberration caught me by surprise. Even more jarring was being dressed down by a geeky guy with an actual pocket protector who spoke in Jacoby’s reedy voice while affecting Grimm’s stoic demeanor.

“I know what Maximus asked of you, and I’ve prepared for it,” he said.

Did he prowl around the department eavesdropping? Or was Maximus loose lipped around his most trusted confidant? Despite my doubts about Grimm’s choice to illusion himself as a personal assistant, he had managed to make the most of his newfound position.

“We can’t afford to lose more votes,” he explained, “so you needn’t kill anyone else.”

“Not when they can kill themselves, right?”

My sarcasm caused his expression to droop wearily.

“You hold onto things better let go,” he said after a long breath. “I think you’d find yourself a happier man if you weren’t so intent on spiting others for situations outside your control.”

My eyes narrowed. “I didn’t realize therapy sessions were part of your job description, Mister Thatcher.”

It was Grimm’s turn to snap back, “And you aren’t half as amusing as you think you are.” He rounded the desk and sat more heavily than should have been possible for his slight frame. “Go to the morgue,” he commanded. “Talk to Vinton.”

I snorted. “No.”

Sure, Vinton had access to bodies, but they were the wrong bodies. And Maximus’s sole request was that the victim had to be identifiable. The gang’s resident necromancer could work literal magic with a cadaver, but he couldn’t change its identity. That was closer to Grimm’s forte, and I didn’t hear him offering assistance.

I folded my arms as Grimm glowered at me .

“Do you want to try that again?” he asked. What should have been a menacing sneer looked awkward on Thatcher’s weaselly face.

“I’d rather chop up a body than get help from that brown-nosing dick,” I said.

Huffing a breath, Grimm waved a hand. “Chop up a body if it suits you, but not one of the politicians. We need their votes.”

“I know. I know.”

He’d started and ended this conversation with the same sentiment. The eight people enumerated on Maximus’s hit list had only as much value as their usefulness, and I knew too well how that felt.

The morgue occupied the musty basement of the Capitol building. It was down the hall from the archives, where the smell of old paper and decay hung thickly in the air. Even as kids, Donovan and I avoided this area. Endless bland hallways and limited employees might have made it an ideal playground, but it was too eerie to be fun.

My footsteps echoed as I walked down the empty corridor. It stretched on, countering my progress and making the door at the far end an impossible destination. It did, however, give me time to consider what Vinton could do to help, assuming he was willing.

In the twelve years I’d been part of the Bloody Hex, I’d never worked one on one with the bald bastard. I chalked it up to mutual loathing since he spent the bulk of my younger years trying to prove to Grimm exactly how unfit a frightened teenager was to fill in the gang’s ranks. They didn’t need someone whose magical prowess had been informed by rearranging heavy furniture around the house or cheating at paper plane races at school. And Vinton rarely missed a chance to make clear that if they didn’t need me, I was easily disposed of.

Proving myself hadn’t quelled Vinton’s skepticism, though, or made us friends. I expected to be turned away as soon as I arrived, but facing the brutish man was less intimidating than the imagined monsters that had me checking over both shoulders as I stopped before the heavy steel door marked MORGUE. It would be impossible for anyone to sneak up on me in this barren space, but a constantly guilty conscience and the knowledge of more than a few horror flicks fueled my paranoia.

The sound of my own fist knocking against the closed door startled me, and I jumped as it swung inward to a bright white room.

I shouldered my way through the narrow opening, relieved to be in familiar company until I saw the tall, willowy figure on the other side of the entry.

“Oh, shit.” I stumbled back, eyes darting over the gray-haired woman in a lab coat who regarded me with chagrin.

“What do you want, Fitch?” she grumbled.

Glancing around the room, I assured myself it was, in fact, the right place. A steel table with a sink on one end took center stage, backed by a mortuary cooler that stretched three units high by three wide. The tile underfoot sloped toward a floor drain, and a lightboard on the far wall had clips for holding X-rays.

Definitely the morgue, but not the necromancer I was looking for. I squinted at the woman, wondering how she knew me until realization dawned.

Illusion magic, of course, courtesy of Grimm. Vinton had a notorious face and would not be welcomed on Capitol property unless he was in handcuffs or a holding cell.

“He made you a girl?” I chuckled. “If I’d known that, I would’ve come down here a lot sooner.”

The Jacoby Thatcher disguise was confusing, but this was downright comedic. The wizened old woman gave herself a wide berth as she rounded the embalming table and approached the stainless cooler doors.

“Boss says you need a body,” she said.

With a yank on the polished lever handle, she opened one of the cavities and grabbed the lip of the tray inside. It slid out, serving up a chilled cadaver that I shrunk back from.

Standing aside, she gestured to the offering. “What do you want me to do to it?”

Surprised as I was at Vinton’s willingness to assist, I had to reject him.

“A generic dead guy isn’t gonna work,” I replied. “Maximus will be looking for something he recognizes. Like a tattoo or birthmark…” Or a disembodied head dropped on his desk. I smirked at the thought.

“I can make changes,” Vinton said.

“You can?” So, I was wrong about that .

She nodded. “You got a picture?”

I hadn’t gotten that far. Grimm might have known this was coming, but I’d been given scant minutes to process. Clearly, Maximus didn’t trust me—a theme so consistent I was beginning to wonder if I could even trust myself.

Would he have preferred I put the dead bodies on display? Historically, that was my modus operandi and likely the reason for his doubts. Grimm used kills to send messages; not wanting to bother the police with missing persons reports. It ensured the Bloody Hex got credit for our crimes, growing our notoriety on every occasion.

Either Maximus didn’t believe I was capable of cleaning up after myself, or his suspicions ran closer to the truth than I was comfortable with.

“But if you did that,” I began to Vinton, “what happens when somebody sees the real, live person walking around? Maximus will know for sure I didn’t kill them, and we’ll be worse off than when we started.”

My knowledge of necromancy was admittedly limited. I’d seen Vinton in action plenty of times—enough to fuel my nightmares—but how those skills applied to this situation remained nebulous. Wandering forward, I hopped up to sit on the metal table. What looked like a hanging produce scale interrupted the line of sight between Vinton’s grandmotherly disguise and me.

“What about making somebody look dead?” I wondered aloud. “Only mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.” My Miracle Max impression was wasted on Vinton, who stared blankly .

“ Princess Bride ?” I tried again. The woman’s wrinkled features gave nothing in return, and I shrugged. “Probably not your kinda thing.”

“Probably not.” She gave the tray a shove that sent it rolling back into the dark cavity. The door followed suit, slamming with a resounding clank. “I can make someone look dead, though.”

“Seriously?”

Vinton crossed his arms atop the woman’s saggy breasts. “Bring them to me. I’ll make them look like they’re dead. For an hour or two. Long enough to show old Max.”

The timing was vague enough to make me itchy, but my brain barreled past such concerns and into wondering how and where I would get my next victim.

“Then you put them in storage with the others,” Vinton concluded.

No. Not storage. But coming up with an alternative was a problem for future Fitch. This job already had enough steps to keep me busy and so many ways it could go wrong.