I extended the small sheaf of printed pages. He looked at them, then reluctantly straightened in his chair and leaned forward to take them in something just short of a snatch, blowing his breath out as if that small effort had winded him. Which it probably had. I made a mental note to get my own out-of-shape ass to the gym. I was nowhere near as bad as Pellini; I could still run two miles without puking, though it sure wasn’t pretty. But I knew I owed it to the cops I worked with to stay in something resembling good condition. I couldn’t even imagine how Pellini would handle backing someone up in a fight or a foot pursuit.

I kept the professional smile glued into place as he glanced over what I had so far—even when he gave a snort that sounded suspiciously derisive. “I’ll have to teach you how to do a follow-up,” he said, his tone pompous. He looked up at me, a slight sneer curving his mouth. “You got fucking lucky with the serial killer. Now it’s time for you to learn how to do a proper investigation.”

I clenched my jaw tightly enough to feel my teeth squeak to keep from saying something that would no doubt be career-destroying. “I don’t think I got lucky,” I said stiffly. “I put in a lot of time—”

“You got lucky,” he said, cutting me off. “But don’t take offense,” he continued, as I tried to control my seething. “Most cops make great careers out of being lucky.” Then he gave me an arrogant smirk. “I’ll teach you how to solve a case by actually working it, though.”

I forced myself to nod. “Sure thing, Pellini. Maybe we can go out for a beer and you can tell me about some of the big murder cases you worked in the city.”

His face reddened, and I knew I’d struck at least a glancing blow. Pellini had worked in patrol and then courtroom security. He’d worked in Investigations in NOPD for only a year before coming over here, and that had been in Property Crimes. Not that there was anything shameful about Property Crimes—I’d worked them for two years before taking on the Symbol Man case—but by that measure I had more experience than he did. And I had a feeling that, if we were to compare stats, I’d still have him beat—even with the fact that he’d been in a metro area and I’d been in sleepy rural Beaulac. I still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to talk his way into being a homicide detective over here, but I also knew that wondering about that sort of thing was a waste of energy.

He huffed and stood, tugging at his pants to get them positioned properly beneath the great shelf of his belly. “I’m gonna go talk to Brian’s dad. I’d ask you to come with me, but me and the judge go back a ways from our NOPD days. I’m sure he’s going through a rough spot right now, and he’ll feel better knowing that a senior detective is handling the case. Plus, it’s gonna be a lot of guy talk, and it’d probably be over your head.”

I resisted the urge to be offended by any of the myriad of insults implied in that statement and instead forced myself to be relieved that I didn’t need to spend any more time with Pellini. “No problem,” I said brightly. “Let me know when you need any help.” As long as it’s not with finding your dick under that roll of fat, I thought silently as I left and returned to my own office.

I closed my door, allowing myself to fume for a few minutes, followed by some wallowing in self-pity. Is Pellini’s connection to Judge Roth how he got the cases reassigned to him? He pulled strings? And if so, did the judge know what he was letting himself in for? I briefly debated throwing something heavy and breakable, but about the only thing that fell into that category in my office was my computer, and I wasn’t quite brave enough to go there.

I finally had to settle for wadding up the contents of my printer tray and chucking the paper balls across the room. Nowhere near as satisfying, but by the time I cleaned up the resulting mess, I had pretty much burned through the majority of my ire.

My cell phone rang, yanking me out of my funk. “Kara Gillian,” I answered.

“Hey, Kara, it’s Doc. Got some bad news for you about your councilman.”

“Now what?”

“Well, it wasn’t an accident.”

My stomach tightened. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, unless he fell down and hit his head twice. The impact and positioning’s all wrong for it to be just from falling in the shower. There’s not enough trauma to be life-threatening, but I’m pretty sure he got whacked a couple of times with something heavy—enough to knock him out or stun him—and then he was stuffed into the corner of the shower so that he’d asphyxiate.”

“I hate you,” I said automatically, since that was the reaction he was surely expecting, but my mind was racing a thousand miles an hour.

He laughed. “Sorry. I’ll get back to you later about specifics.”

I hung up the phone, feeling a strange combination of dread and relief. Two homicides. Suddenly I had the possibility of a common thread between Brian Roth and Davis Sharp. But what other connection could Brian Roth have had with Davis Sharp? They were probably at least acquainted with each other, due to Sharp’s restaurant, but that would also apply to half the population of Beaulac.

I waggled my mouse to turn off my screen saver, and started typing in online searches for essence, souls, and anything I could think of that could give me a bit of a clue as to what besides an ilius could consume essence. Brian’s death might not have been my case anymore, but I had every intention of figuring out why the hell both of their essences had been consumed. This wasn’t a waste of taxpayer dollars, I told myself, since technically it did relate to police work, even though it wasn’t anything that would ever go into a written report.

Doing online searches was always a toss of the dice as far as what came back, but I’d been shocked and pleased before at some obscure discoveries, so I always figured it was worth a try. I knew that there were other arcane practitioners in the world—not just summoners—and it made sense that someone somewhere might have mentioned something. In fact, I occasionally found obscure information in the guise of fiction—sort of like how I’d found information on the Symbol Man in a comic book.

But I didn’t have the same kind of luck this time. I spent a fruitless hour surfing the Internet, finding plenty on vampires, some Japanese manga, even some outlandish erotic fiction about unicorn-riding soul-eating succubi zombies, but nothing I could put a finger on and say, “That’s it!”

I wiped my browser history and cleared the cache. Then I sighed and settled in for an afternoon of incredibly mundane but necessary paperwork. Ah, the exciting life of a detective.

I pulled into the parking lot of st. Luke’s Catholic church shortly after noon the next day. As the investigating detective into Davis Sharp’s murder, it was reasonable—and practically expected—for me to attend his funeral, though not for the reasons that were usually put forth in crime fiction, where the detective attended the victim’s funeral in order to corner and question suspects.

In my world, if a detective tried to question suspects at a funeral, he or she would be suspended or fired before they could say, But that’s how it’s done on TV!

This was essentially little more than good PR—show the grieving family and the public that the police department cares and intends to take the case very seriously and personally.

I pulled my jacket on right before I reached the door, noting with mild amusement that I wasn’t the only attendee avoiding wearing a jacket out in the sweltering heat. I’d dressed in my one good-quality suit—the one I wore for court and funerals—and even worn low heels and tasteful jewelry for the occasion. I didn’t have a problem with the PR aspect of attending funerals—after all, most of our funding came from tax dollars, and murmuring polite regrets wasn’t terribly onerous. But at the same time I was interested in seeing who would attend, even if interrogations weren’t on the schedule. And, given Auri’s testimony, I was especially interested to see if any slender blondes showed up.