Page 23 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

“ T hey’re...” I turned and stared at the names, trying to think of how to connect them up without saying “they’re all vampires who live in Los Angeles.”

They weren’t all in the same social class, since Kate was on there. They didn’t all know Charles well, if at all—I’d never seen Doc and Charles in proximity, and the two had nothing in common, unless “rich white dude who lived in the hills” was a strong commonality.

Before I could manage to square it all in my brain, though, Davin made a funny noise, almost like he was choking. I looked up at him, concerned, but he was looking around the room with the funniest expression on his face.

He squinted a little, blinking his eyes repeatedly and asked, “Has someone been chopping garlic?”

I cocked my head at that, because that was a weird question. “Obviously not, but why would it matter? You love garlic. Meg’s curried crab soup has a ton of garlic in it.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “But I don’t wear it.”

Which was a fair point. I sniffed the air, and what I’d been attributing to leftover brisket smell was actually very much garlic, and getting more garlicky as we stood there.

Cain just ducked his head, looking deeply uncomfortable for a moment. “I had Italian for lunch.”

I didn’t need Davin’s curious head-cock to know that was a lie.

Cain himself was so uncomfortable with the words that they were obviously a lie.

Still, I couldn’t imagine what would make a man smell like garlic that was in any way important to me, so I just shrugged it off and.

..remembered that I’d been avoiding the conversation at hand.

Shit.

Finally, I sighed and shrugged. “They’re all people in my mother’s social circle. Well, most of them. I’m sure you’ve met Kate by now; she was Charles’s assistant, and in San Diego for a birth in her family.”

“So she told us,” he agreed, turning back to look at the board. “We couldn’t confirm it, though. The person she named agreed that she had come to see her, but I can’t find a legal relationship.”

I acted as though I was considering that for a moment, then shrugged.

“Does it make a difference if they’re related by blood?

Family is family, and people have done stranger things than take a few days off work to go see the grandchild of a friend born.

The important part is that she does have a reasonable alibi, and she doesn’t have a big ugly motive. ”

“Actually, we got a look at the will, and she’s set to inherit a few million dollars,” Cain said, and I assumed he meant that as a disagreement—that the inheritance was a motive.

So I shook my head, picking up the purple marker and crossing her off entirely. “Nope. She didn’t know there was a will, much less that Charles was leaving her anything. Kate’s a decent, loyal person, and frankly, I don’t think she’s got the temperament to have done it.”

Cain turned to give me a sad sidelong look, shaking his head right back.

“I hate to say you’re being too optimistic, but when you’ve been doing my job as long as I have, you realize that given enough reason, anyone can be a killer.

And some people will kill for far less than what you think is a good motive. ”

“Seriously?” Miller interjected, sounding annoyed as hell. “We’re here to question a suspect, Cain, not work with him. Plus we find him sitting here interfering with a police investigation?—”

“How?” Davin asked, bringing the tirade to a halt.

“What?”

“How is he interfering with your investigation? He hasn’t hidden evidence or told anyone to leave town.

Looking into this himself isn’t illegal.

He knew Charles, and this murder matters to him.

You’ve no right to tell him he can’t investigate.

” Davin crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at Miller, and unlike me when I stood like that, he didn’t look at all defensive.

No, he just looked mildly annoyed and hot as hell, like a bouncer at a club who was about to eject a handsy d-bag.

It felt like those black eyes could cut a hole in a man.

“He had critical information that?—”

“He didn’t. He knows people who know both his mother and the victim.

He’s allowed to make all the lists he wants.

I’ll bet he could name a hundred other people who knew them both, who aren’t on either list. Was he to come down and give you the name of every single person who ever came in contact with either of them?

” Davin, quite clearly, was not budging.

He stared into Miller’s eyes directly, his gaze piercing, and I almost wished Twist had been awake to see it.

It was a masterclass in the cat stare down, and since she didn’t have a handy mother, she might need lessons.

I had sort of always thought of vampires as very large cats, though, so it made sense.

“It’s true,” I said, interrupting the stare down.

Miller looked away. Davin didn’t. Regardless of who was winning big bad hottie of the year—not that Miller had ever been in the running, with his bad combover and sweaty face—I needed Cain to know that I wasn’t just trying to fuck him over.

“I do know a lot of the people in these social circles. But I don’t think I’m closer than anyone else to knowing who the killer is.

I’ve got a big fat nothing. It’s why I’m making these lists, hoping they might jog something. ”

Cain finally looked back at me, expression unhappy, but this time not necessarily with me. “We’re not doing especially better, I’m afraid. I was hoping you might have information on a note we found in the victim’s schedule.”

He pulled out his phone and flipped through it for a moment, then held it up in front of me. It was a picture of a page in a little handheld planner, and on a date over a week earlier, it said “Whisper, Broken Dreams, nine p.m.”

I blinked at that for a moment, then looked up at Cain. “I mean, you know as much about Whisper as I do.”

He blinked, turning the phone to himself for a moment, then looked back up at me. “You think—you think he meant Whisper like the Whisper? The gang leader from twenty years ago?”

“Is there another way to read it?” I turned back to my list, trying to look like I was thinking hard, so I wouldn’t have to look Cain in the eye as I lied.

“I don’t know what Broken Dreams is, but I can’t think of anything else Whisper might be.

Plus Charles made a point of capitalizing it, so it’s got to be a name, right?

You know of any other Whispers?” I turned back to face him at that last, because the bit about Whisper, at least, was true.

Cain returned his gaze to his phone for a moment, then looked back up at me with a sharp nod. “Thank you, Flynn. That’s...that’s helpful. I appreciate it.”

He turned and took a few steps toward the front like he was leaving, and when Miller hesitated to follow him to the door, he held his hand out toward the door in a gesture that screamed, “well?”

“We should take him downtown and?—”

“For what? Writing random lists of people? Yeah, good luck making that into a charge against him. No wonder you boys in vice are always failing to bring charges. Come on. I have an idea, and we’re following up.

” He glanced back at me. “Don’t leave town, obviously, and be careful.

I know you’re good at your job, but this isn’t lost pets or angry husbands, Flynn.

This is murder. Cornered murderers? Tend to murder again. ”

“Never left town before, not gonna start now,” I said, waving to both of them. I couldn’t speak to the rest, because he wasn’t wrong, but also, I wasn’t going to stop. How could I? The cops were never going to find the killer, and someone needed to.

When the two of them were across the parking lot climbing into a boring brown sedan, there was a sniff behind me, and I turned to find Twist sitting up and stretching on my desk.

First her back legs, then front, then arching her back like one of those cats on a halloween card.

“Who was that, and why did he smell like lunch?” she asked.

“It was just garlic,” I said, frowning. Wasn’t garlic bad for cats?

If we’d been feeding her so much garlic that she equated the scent with food, that probably wasn’t a good thing.

“And Detective Cain isn’t lunch. People aren’t for eating.

He’s a good guy who’s trying to make Avalon a safer place for us to be. ”

“No, no, not him,” she disagreed. “The other one. The shiny one with the red cheeks. The Cain is good. I like him. He made you feel better when you were sick.”

That was...maybe the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. She liked Cain because he’d comforted me after seeing Charles’s body.

Frankly, I had liked him before, but I could admit that I liked him more after. But that meant she’d thought Detective Miller smelled like food, not Cain and his Italian lunch lie.

I didn’t even remember what Miller had smelled like, other than the usual mix of human smells, sweat and food and maybe a hint of stale cigarette.

He hadn’t smelled unusual to me, but maybe my nose wasn’t as good as Twist’s.

I turned to Davin. “What did Miller smell like to you? The short balding one?”

He stared after them a moment, then turned back to look at me. “Lunch?”

“Like—” What the hell did that even mean? How did one human smell like lunch and another not? Especially since I’d watched Davin eat a whole lot of regular food, so I didn’t think he was one of those vampires who equated humans with eating.

He looked back at me, heavy consideration still on his face. “It’s...it’s hard, because I’m not sure what everything means. It’s just, something about him hits the instincts. Makes you want to hunt him and put him on the ground. It’s sharp. Astringent. I don’t know what it is.”

Huh. I considered all the information for a moment, and what I knew of humans smells. “Was it stronger after you glared him into compliance?”

“Much,” he agreed.

“Fear,” I concluded, because it was the only answer that made sense.

I didn’t remember smelling anything like it, but my sense of smell was a little hit-and-miss sometimes.

“You know how people say ‘they can smell your fear’ about wild animals? That’s what you’re smelling.

Some chemical change that comes along with him being intimidated by you. ”

Davin didn’t seem especially excited about that. No, he winced and glanced at the floor, like it was a little embarrassing. I got it, though. It sucked when your instincts tried to control you.

“Okay, so anyway, we’re not eating Detective Miller, even if I do think he’s a beady-eyed little weasel man. Instead, we’re going to talk about Broken Dreams at nine.”

Davin squinted at me a moment, then shook his head, like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “Say that again, but in a way that makes sense.”

“Broken Dreams,” I specified. “The note said Whisper, Broken Dreams, nine p.m. and the date was a few days ago. Nine p.m. and the date are self-explanatory. Whisper is a legend in the local vampiric community, and also in the local human community. An illegally made child of the city’s previous senator, a gang leader who caused incredible amounts of damage to both city infrastructure and the authorities’ reputation for being able to do something about problems. Everyone knows about it, and I pointed it out to Cain.

That’s why he thanked me. Broken Dreams, though, that was a nightclub Charles owned and ran back in the nineties.

It’s been closed for over two decades, so maybe the cops won’t find out about it. ”

Davin’s eyes narrowed as he watched me. “Are you saying you just lied to the guards?”

“Cops,” I corrected. “And lied isn’t...quite the right term. I just didn’t tell them everything.”

“You said you didn’t know what Broken Dreams was. That was a lie.”

“I didn’t?—”

“You did.”

I had. It was true. Somehow, I still didn’t feel bad about it.

“It’s reasonable that I wouldn’t have known about it, though,” I pointed out.

“It closed when I was elementary-school aged. And if there’s any chance Whisper goes there or uses the former club for more than just a meeting that’s already over?

I won’t apologize for not steering the cops toward it.

I don’t think they should confront Whisper.

They’d try to arrest them. How do you think that would go? ”

And that, he didn’t have an answer for.

At least, not a happy one.