Page 20 of Mystic Justice (The Other Detective #2)

Before I headed out to the field, I went into my poky office to check my emails. DS Roberts waylaid me outside the door. ‘I hear congratulations are in order,’ he said.

‘Is nothing sacred in this place? I only found out about my promotion five minutes ago!’

He grinned. ‘That’s how things go around here. Don’t forget to work with the kid now that you’re high and mighty.’

‘I won’t,’ I grunted.

He nodded. ‘See that you don’t.’ Point made, he swaggered off. He and I had never seen eye to eye; I’d had to keep too much from him, and that had kept us as colleagues but never friends. Maybe the formation of Unit 13 would change that, too.

When I opened the door to my office, Krieg was sitting in the guest chair looking relaxed. I assumed he was waiting for me. ‘Good morning,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘It is now.’

He was dressed in black leather pants, a white shirt and a custom-made black leather jacket.

I narrowed my eyes at his outfit then glanced down at my own black-suit, white-shirt ensemble.

Had he dressed to match me? Ava had told me matching dress meant something in ogre culture though I didn’t know what.

If he was dressing to match me, the urge to wear a samba outfit next time we went on a date would be hard to resist.

Next to my desk was a sleek black mini-fridge. I sat in my chair, turned on my computer, then opened the fridge door: it was filled with Dr Pepper. I couldn’t have stopped the smile that crossed my face if I’d tried. ‘You got me a fridge full of Dr Pepper?’

‘I did. Do you like it?’

I laughed. ‘I love it, though I wonder how long it’ll be before the others notice it and steal all the cans.’

His lips twitched. ‘Theft? In a police station? Outrageous.’

‘Food and drink are fair game.’

Krieg shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘I’ll add a lock,’ he murmured, mostly to himself.

Although it was early for a fizzy drink, I couldn’t resist pulling out a cold can, opening it and taking a big gulp of its twenty-three fruit flavours.

Oh yeah; this was the good stuff. Some cops had problems with drugs or alcohol abuse but I needed nothing more than this little can of caffeinated, sugary goodness.

As vices went, it could have been worse.

I gave a happy hum and checked my emails.

There was only one important message waiting for me: it was from Kate, sent earlier that morning.

She’d got the itchies which meant her magic was running low and she’d gone to the Storyhouse so she could portal into the Common to recharge her magical batteries.

The huge building in Chester served as a café, social hub and the hall of the Portal.

It enabled the human half of the Other to hop into the Common realm for a few hours to get a magical recharge.

Kate was staying overnight in one of their secure flats, which meant she couldn’t conduct the unidentified centaur’s autopsy until later in the afternoon after she returned to the Other.

If she tried to do the autopsy while she was in Common, all she’d see would be a normal horse and she certainly wouldn’t see any runes.

Waiting to start was the sensible move but the waiting frustrated me; it meant a further delay on ID’ing our centaur, John Stallion.

‘What’s up?’ Krieg asked.

‘Dr Potter has to recharge.’ I sighed. ‘She’ll be out of commission for most of today.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ he said diplomatically.

‘No, but it’s a pain. The first twenty-four hours on a case are the “golden hours” when the case is as hot as it’s going to get.

We’re already in that twenty-four hours for the centaur and we’re stuck without a name, a witness or a motive.

And I’m still waiting on toxicology on Moss Hollings.

The kidnappers gave her some sort of healing potion.

Some potions are rarer than others and if we can pin down what type they used, it might give us something else to run down. ’

He studied me. ‘You’re good at this.’

‘Police work?’ I said, amused. ‘It’s my job.’

‘It’s more than a job to you.’

He wasn’t wrong, so I didn’t deny it. The job I’d taken to help me find Dad’s killer had morphed into my raison d’être.

Every criminal I locked up or eliminated was one less threat to the innocent.

Some days it felt like whack-a-mole but most days it felt good to make a difference to the world, one wrong ’un at a time.

However, the fact that I knew no more about Dad’s death than when I’d joined was a constant source of irritation to me, like a burr under my skin.

‘Thackeray has set up a new Other-only police unit. Unit 13. I’m heading it.’

‘Congratulations, Inspector.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Who’s working under you?’

When I reeled off the team’s names, his face revealed nothing. ‘You remember Elvira Garcia?’ I asked.

‘Yes of course,’ he said flatly. ‘She’s the new Stone.’

‘Well, perhaps not anymore. She’s part of Unit 13 now.’

‘Some other poor bastard will become the Executioner,’ Krieg growled.

‘No doubt.’

After a pause he asked, ‘So, we’re in the field today? What are we doing?’

‘First we need to speak to Ji-ho Lee, our tech whizz, and see if he’s finished reviewing the CCTV footage I requested from Kassandra Scholes’ coven. Come on.’

I had barely sipped at the can, so I picked it up to take it with me. I led Krieg through the warren that was Chester station to one of the back rooms where our tech team lived.

Ji-ho was alone in the tech office, K-pop blaring out of his phone.

He was sitting cross-legged on his desk chair, shoes kicked off, mouthing lyrics while he studied his computer.

His dark hair flopped into his eyes as he moved to the frenetic beat and he absently pushed his sleek locks back with a pen.

The air smelled of ground coffee, no doubt due to the monster coffee machine that he’d brought in especially for the office.

Apparently he had a matching machine at home; in his view, eight hours was too long to spend with shit coffee.

‘Hey, Ji-ho.’

He swivelled on his chair and gave me a wide smile.

‘Shirlylock! You here to chase me? You wound me. I’m on it!

’ His eyes passed curiously over Krieg. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, without a hint of trepidation.

To be fair, he was in the bowels of a police station and this deep in you’d only expect to see the good guys.

‘Krieg,’ my companion grunted shortly.

Ji-ho’s eyes widened. ‘As in the actual mother-effing King of the Ogres?’

In the face of his enthusiasm, some of Krieg’s stiffness faded away and he nodded. ‘One and the same.’

‘Cool,’ Ji-ho breathed. ‘Royalty.’ He eyed me. ‘Rumour says you’ve gone up in the world but I didn’t realise you were boning royalty.’

I folded my arms. ‘We’re not boning.’

‘Yet,’ Krieg added unhelpfully. I glared at him and he grinned back unrepentantly.

‘Cool, cool,’ Ji-ho said. ‘You’re in the “will you, won’t you?” bang zone.’ He sounded almost wistful. ‘Good times.’

‘What zone are you in?’ Krieg enquired.

Ji-ho smiled. ‘Oh I’m in the “full-love-adoration” zone. I’ve been with Mei for a year now, and as soon as I can crack her family, I’m gonna pop the big one.’ He pulled out his wallet and opened it to reveal a photograph of a woman I assumed was Mei.

She had a calm, thoughtful expression and was wearing a traditional red qipao with gold embroidery, the kind usually reserved for celebrations.

Her dark hair was swept into an elegant bun and delicate pearl earrings framed her face.

There was something timeless in the way she was looking at the camera: poised, self-assured and quietly radiant.

The love in her eyes shone through. ‘Whoa,’ I commented. ‘You’re punching above your weight.’

Ji-ho grinned. ‘Don’t I know it? As soon as I’ve learned Mandarin, her parents will have to approve of me.’

‘They don’t like you?’ Krieg asked.

‘They like me well enough, but they don’t love my job. They want a lawyer or a doctor for their little girl, not a police tech.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll win them over.’

‘No doubt,’ I said firmly. Ji-ho had eager, puppy-dog energy; if Mei’s parents could resist that then, in my view, they weren’t worth bending over backwards for. Though that was easy for me to say because Krieg had no living parents to impress.

‘Okay.’ Ji-ho tapped the pen in his fingers on the desk and turned back to his computer. ‘I just isolated the right CCTV footage this very second. You’ve got great timing.’

‘What have you got for me?’ I asked eagerly.

He clicked and used his three monitors to good effect.

On the second screen he pulled up Botany’s CCTV and showed me a visual of Sandra Jaxim hustling out of the bar on the night of Moss’s murder.

She’d said she worked until 11pm, but she’d left bang on at 9.

30pm. Her head was down, she was clutching her purse and she looked so furtive she might as well have had ‘I’M UP TO SOMETHING NEFARIOUS’ tattooed across her forehead.

We watched until she walked out of frame, then Ji-ho clicked another button and on his third screen we saw the CCTV that the coven had given us after Kass had pulled strings for me.

We watched Sandra enter the coven tower half an hour later, still in her smart work clothes, black trousers, white blouse.

‘You got her coming back out again?’ Krieg asked.

Ji-ho nodded. ‘I sure do. Check it.’ He clicked another few buttons and we watched Sandra leave the tower.

The time stamp said 10.39pm. She was dressed in the same black trousers but now she was wearing a black blouse.

She looked like she’d had a fast shower: her curls looked darker and were slicked back into a bun.

She shoved something into her bag and then she marched away in sturdy kitten heels.

Lena Shaw followed a beat later. In contrast, she was dressed to the nines in tottering heels and a little black dress that barely covered her crotch.

It was an outfit that said she was about to hit the town, not kidnap a co-worker, but people used disguises and I wasn’t ruling her out until we had a solid alibi for her.

She watched Sandra leave but didn’t call out to suggest they share a taxi. No friendship there.

‘I followed Jaxim’s progress on some other CCTV.’ Ji-ho pulled up some more footage and we watched Sandra climb into a taxi with Fast Cars written on the side of it.

‘Have you—?’ I started.

‘Tracked down the taxi company and asked for the record of pick-ups on that day and their location?’ He grinned.

‘Why yes, yes I have. They were super amenable. No warrant needed.’ He waggled his eyebrows.

‘Methinks they’re hiding some shit and they don’t want us digging in, because they virtually threw the records at me. ’

‘And?’

‘And—’ he paused for dramatic effect ‘—they dropped her off at the Baltic Triangle, outside the Botanica Garden.’

‘Any link to the bar Botany?’

‘I checked. Nope – different owners, even when you peel back the shell corporations.’

I patted his shoulder. ‘Ji-ho, you’re a genius.’

He beamed. ‘Back at you, Shirlylock. I can’t wait to see you kick butt on this one.

I read the Hollings’ girl’s file – to drown someone afraid of the water is just freaking brutal.

I love the water but I despise dark underground spaces.

Too much Indiana Jones as a kid. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of a naga being afraid of the underground. ’

Besides Ji-ho, I’d never encountered another naga.

I’d never seen him in snake form, though I had seen his eyes transform to slitted pupils on rare occasions when he was under pressure to assimilate vast quantities of data.

He’d once told me that it was his snake-like brain that enabled him to process various data streams at the same time.

‘Not all snakes like the underground,’ I murmured absently as my own brain whirred. ‘Some are tree snakes or water snakes.’

He nodded emphatically. ‘I’m totally descended from water snakes. I’m never happier than when I’m floating.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s another reason why Mei’s family don’t like me – they’re fire elementals.’

‘Opposites attract,’ Krieg asserted.

I wondered what that meant for us. As far as I could see, we had a lot of similarities: career-driven, focused, deadly.

‘They haven’t got the memo,’ Ji-ho huffed.

‘Before we go, can you zoom in on the CCTV as Sandra leaves the coven tower?’ I asked. ‘I’d like to see what she put in her bag.’

‘Let’s see what we can do, but it depends on the original quality of the footage. If the coven scrimped on their security, no amount of zooming in will create pixels that aren’t there.’

He tapped away at his laptop, and the second monitor showed Sandra’s easy egress. He tapped again and the footage zoomed in, sharpening enough for us to see the black feathered mask in her hand.

‘A mask and she’s dressed all in black,’ Krieg commented. ‘And she was dropped off in the warehouse district.’

We were both thinking the same thing. ‘She went to a black tourney,’ I said grimly.

The question was, had she killed Moss Hollings afterwards? A woman who watched men and women fight to death for fun struck me as someone who might be equally capable of killing.

Maybe the black tourney was the appetiser and Moss Hollings was the main meal.