Herman wrinkled his nose. The place smelled. Bad. The desks were covered in fast food containers and white Chinese food boxes. It didn’t look like they used the half fridge in the corner for anything but beer. The garbage can was overflowing with old food. This was just the first room.

They had walled part of the room off using cubicle partitions, presumably for a bit of privacy. The first room was empty. Which meant they were probably outside, and Herman would be damned if he was going to clean this mess up himself. They would follow his rules or he would find someone else to rent the room.

He went to check the back room before he locked up the place for the night, just in case they were sleeping off an early drunk. Herman knew they had at least two couches behind the partitions. He just hoped they didn’t have any girls back there. Girls didn’t listen. Girls were loud. Girls were trouble.

There were no lights in the second room. If anything, it smelled worse back here. Something rotten. And something else too . . . something that smelled strangely like the bear claws he used to buy every morning, until he stopped because he couldn’t shake the feeling he was wasting money on something frivolous.

He fished his penlight out of his pocket to check the couches.

Sure enough, there they were. Illuminated in the narrow, weak yellow beam, he could see one of the brokers still passed out on one of the couches. The other one had rolled off the second couch and lay facedown on the floor. He shook his head. Stupid, arrogant assholes.

“Hey,” he said, kicking the frame of the closest couch. “Wake up. You forget the rules, hey?”

Neither man moved. In fact, they seemed unnaturally still.

Herman kicked the couch again. “Hey! Time to wake up. I’m talking to you!”

Still no movement.

He aimed the light straight into their faces and his gut knew before his brain figured out that the two brokers were dead. Something looked wrong with their skin, but it was hard to tell in the wavering light. They both seemed unnaturally pale, and the skin looked puffy almost, something akin to the texture of a rough sponge.

He backed out of the room, knees buckling. He dropped into an office chair and pushed himself across the room. He could not understand how they had died. For the first time in over six years, if he could have found a cigarette, he would have broken his solemn vow. He placed a trembling hand out to the desk to steady himself.

He switched the flashlight off. It wasn’t much help in the first room anyway. He took several deep breaths, focusing on just inhaling and exhaling, long and slow. He needed to think this out. But the two corpses in the makeshift room, not ten feet from where he sat, kept getting in the way of making a decision. He felt paralyzed. He pulled his hands into fists and tried to just breathe.

The CO₂ he exhaled caught the attention of a dozen bugs dozing under the chair’s seat. They set out to the edge of the fabric, thousands of years of instincts directing them to a large warm-blooded mammal.

To feed.

To spawn.

The bugs found Herman’s slacks. Their jaws could not penetrate the fabric, so they latched onto the threads, wriggling along on six legs. They stopped when he moved, and just hung on, and when they felt the stillness, they worked their way closer to the warmth of bare flesh.

Herman couldn’t feel them. The thought of fingerprints had just crossed his mind. He jerked his hand off the desk and wiped it with his rag. He stood up quickly and patted his pockets, making sure nothing had fallen out. His wife was always watching those police forensic TV shows, and it seemed like the cops would inevitably find some hair or some damn thing to discover the killer. He backed out of the room, hoping he hadn’t touched anything else.

Outside, in the corridor, he locked the door and twisted the rag around the handle. He could always call 911 later, after he figured out what he would say. In the meantime, he would do his job and stick to his usual routine. He could always claim he found them later.

He started up the stairs, moving slow, and had to pause near the top to catch his breath.

The bugs crawled up under his shirt and over the waistband.

Herman opened the door to the basement and rubbed his sore back, rolled his shoulders, and made sure to lock to the door behind him. He still couldn’t feel the bugs.

CHAPTER 25

3:21 PM

August 11

Sam shook his head at the empty hallway. “What a fuckin’ asshole.” He called back to Captain Garnes, “You want to write this up?”

“Hell, no.”

“Me, neither. He say who he’s with?”

“CDC.”

“Ahhh . . . shit.”

“Shit is right. Listen, I’m sorry, but when this comes down, I’m passing this down to you, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

“I got no time for the kind of shit that’s gonna rain down, understand? What the hell are you doing here anyway?”

“Prisoner transfer. Some homeless woman.”

Captain Garnes laughed. “I see. Assignment like that, you’re already in trouble. What are you, a goddamn shit magnet or something? She’s in the old jail. Get her and then get the fuck out of here.”

Ed said, “Good seeing you again too, Harold,” as Captain Garnes led the cops upstairs.

Sam gave Tommy his card. “That’s us, your local shit collectors. You got problems, you let me know.”

“Thanks,” Don said and tilted his head at Tommy. “Fuck it. No more rat. We’re done. Happy Hour isn’t gonna last forever.” He shook Ed and Sam’s hands, doffed his Blackhawks cap at Tonya, and started upstairs.

Tommy grabbed the equipment, gave Tonya a nod, and followed.

Sam and Ed worked their way through City Hall, heading to the County side. The hallways were slowly beginning to fill up with people again. A deeply tanned, middle-aged guy came out of the sheriff’s office. He was dressed like a tourist, baggy shorts, even looser loud Hawaiian shirt, but he was far too muscular for a regular tourist. He had a crew cut, and scars on his scalp. He tried not to limp, but something in his right knee was sore. He kept his gaze pointedly straight ahead and passed the detectives without a glance in their direction.

Something about the lack of expression on the guy’s face set off Sam’s radar, so he filed it away, and then focused on the job immediately in front of him. Inside, they saw an empty front area. Ed signed in. Sam stepped behind the front counter and knocked on the security door. It was unlocked. Behind it, the two rooms were empty, and the cell door stood open.

It didn’t feel right. Something was off.

Sam unbuttoned his sport coat, keeping his hand near his shoulder holster. Ed sensed it too, and unsnapped his own holster.

Qween lay facedown inside the cell. Her hands were handcuffed behind her. When she heard Ed and Sam’s footsteps, she rolled over and kicked out, yelling, “Dirty motherfucker.”

“This is Detectives Ed Jones and Sam Johnson, ma’am,” Ed said.

They got a look at her face. One eye was starting to puff shut. Her bottom lip was cracked bloody. Somebody’d been using her as a punching bag. “Come git some, motherfuckers. That’s right.” She kicked out at them.

“Ma’am. We’re here to pick you up. You promise to behave, we’ll take those handcuffs off.”

“You just want to get my back turned, fucker.”

“We’re serious, ma’am.”

A pause while she thought about it. “Slide them keys over, then.”

Ed sighed, slid the keys over to Qween, then stepped back and waited. When he was a rookie, he’d learned that ninety percent of being an effective patrol officer was being patient. Give people enough time to blow off steam and calm down, they would accept the situation, sometimes willingly follow him to the station. He didn’t look at it as wasted time. It was worth going slow, instead of having some homeless prisoner puking or shitting in his car.