Brooding City: Brooding City Series Book 1 (5 page)

Brennan wasn’t sure what to believe. It sounded like a horrible trip, except his power was telling him that Greg’s story was true. “You think you had some sort of…what? A vision?”

Greg shrugged. “Maybe. There are always psychics claiming to know the future, right?”

“They’re always charlatans, though,” Brennan said, perfectly aware of his own hypocrisy. Here he was, a human lie-detector, denouncing the possibility of psychics. “Bishop is fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Greg nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said. He didn’t sound entirely convinced. There was a long, silent pause.

“You mentioned a stage?”

“It looked like some kind of theatre,” Greg said, with another one of his patented shrugs.

“We’re in luck, then,” Brennan said, suddenly grinning. “Bishop
hates
the theatre.”

A reluctant smile formed on Greg’s lips. “How fortunate. Still, if you two do see a play or something, maybe you should go in first.”

“That doesn’t sound very gentlemanly of me.”

“Is that a word? And chivalry is nice and all, but it might get her killed.”

Brennan looked at his nephew for a moment before forcing a smile. He hefted the trash bag over his shoulder as he turned to leave. “Get some sleep,” he said. “And take care of yourself!”

“You should sleep, too, Uncle Arty. You look like death.”

“Hey, death wished—ah, forget it.”

ф ф ф

Brennan awoke the
next morning to a message in his voicemail.

“Arthur, it’s Noel. Sorry for the late call, I figured you’d be awake. Guess you needed the sleep, though. God knows we both do.” There was a small laugh. “Anyway, I visited the pharmacy where Nettle worked. Turns out he
had
had a casual girlfriend, but she’d only come by once or twice, and not a word of her in the past few months. I asked around, but nobody knew any more than that. Sounds like they were over a while ago, which leaves us back at square one. I’m going to grab some zees before I go mad. See you at the station.”

Brennan hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place, and he rubbed the crustiness from his eyes. In the bathroom, he wiped a wetted hand across his face and stared at himself in the mirror. The sleep had been dreamless, and he felt as if he had gotten no rest at all. The clock indicated it was a quarter to eight. He thought about what Bishop had said in her message.

No ex-girlfriend, at least not recent enough to make a real suspect of her. It wasn’t much, but it narrowed down the direction of the investigation. If it wasn’t a domestic dispute gone wrong, then there was something much more sinister afoot. But there were too many inconsistencies to make heads or tails of what happened that night.

Brennan shaved, changed clothes, and walked across the street to the station. Odols Police Department was housed in a squat, ugly building that was dwarfed by the high-rise apartment complexes and business offices that rose up on all sides. This late in the morning, nearly everybody was already at work. Bishop looked better rested than she had in days. The change a few hours of sleep could make was a minor miracle.

“What happened to you? Did you sleep on the curb?”

“Good morning to you, too, sweetheart,” Brennan said to her, affecting his best impersonation of Sam.

Bishop shuddered. “Don’t you start on that. If you ever asked me on a date, it would be too weird.”

“You aren’t my type.”

“Strong-willed? Independent? Blonde?”

“Short.”

“Go to Hell.”

“Not yet! I’m not quite ready to die.” He poured himself a steaming cup of what passed as coffee and joined Bishop at her desk. She had the Zachariah Nettle files open on her desk.

“I’m assuming you got my voicemail,” she said, and he grunted the affirmative. “I’ve been looking at these files all morning and there is one thing I’m confused about.”

Brennan raised an eyebrow. “One thing? I looked at these all day yesterday and turned up nothing. In fact, since you ruled out the girlfriend angle, I think we’ve actually
lost
ground. Nothing seems to add up.”

Bishop smiled ruefully. “That’s what I thought at first, too. Inconsistencies abound with Zachariah. He should have been poor by all rights, just scraping by on his pharmacist’s salary, but the things he had in his apartment said otherwise.”

“Actually, I looked into that,” Brennan said. “Pharmacists pull in a lot more than we thought. Six-figure salaries, and that’s just within a few years out of college.”

“Really? Maybe I should change careers,” Bishop mused aloud. “But still, without financial help from his parents? Nettle should still have had student loans to pay off. That kind of education wouldn’t come cheap.”

“He was living pretty luxuriously, from what I saw.”

“Exactly. And as far as we can tell, nothing was stolen, so burglary isn’t a likely motive. I think whoever came to visit Zachariah already had murder in their heart, and I’m relatively certain it has something to do with the extra money.”

Brennan scratched at his chin; he had missed some stubble. “If that’s true, then we’re looking at some pretty serious suspects. Mobsters, gangsters, junkies and their dealers, loan sharks—the list goes on. Anybody who had money to give and the means to take it back when the time came. We could search half the city and not find our guy.”

“True,” she allowed, “but the suspect pool gets a lot shallower once you look closer at the victim’s body.”

“Did our guy leave behind fingerprints? Or some stray hair?”

Bishop sighed. “Unfortunately, nothing so obvious. But we can be reasonably certain that Zachariah knew his killer, and that the attack was induced by some horrible fit of rage. When we saw that Nettle’s eyes had been removed, I thought it had to have been someone who was ashamed to be seen by the victim as a murderer. That profile pointed toward a family member or intimate lover.”

“Both of which we eliminated,” Brennan pointed out.

“Right. But once those options were gone, it left the question of
why
the killer took the eyes. And then it suddenly dawned on me!” She swiveled in her chair and brought up the computer screen. She spoke while she typed. “I asked the lab techs to analyze a tissue sample of the skin around his eyes, where we saw…ah, here it is. Remember the skin irritation we saw at the crime scene? It was caused by some kind of corrosive substance, not a result of the knife gouging the eyes out.”

Brennan followed her train of thought. “So we don’t have a motive yet, but you think the killer removed Nettle’s eyes because he was covering his tracks?”

She nodded. “Whatever the substance was, our killer thinks it can be traced back to him.”

“Was the lab able to determine what exactly we’re dealing with?”

“Unfortunately, no. There wasn’t enough tissue to work with. But considering Nettle’s profession, I’m thinking it’s something you might find in a pharmacy.”

“Something you’d find in a pharmacy,” Brennan echoed. “So if there’s something missing from Zachariah’s workplace—”

“Then we can find out what burned our victim’s eyes—”

“And follow the clues back to our murderer!” Brennan finished triumphantly. His grin was mirrored on Bishop’s lips, and they stared at each other in mutual excitement.

“Well, aren’t you two just adorable?”

Brennan was surprised by the familiar voice. He looked up to see Sam leaning casually against the glass divider with the hallway. Sam was watching them with an amused look sprawled across his face.

“Sam,” he said. “What are you doing here? Don’t get me wrong, it’s always a pleasure, but…”

“But you didn’t call me, I know,” Sam finished. He gestured to Bishop. “I’m actually here to pick up that one.”

“Noel?” Brennan’s eyebrows reached for the ceiling as he turned to her. “You asked him to come here?”

Bright crimson flowed high into her cheeks, though it was impossible to tell whether from anger or embarrassment. “We are working together on the case, so yes, I asked him to come as a consultant.
Only
to consult on the case,” she stressed, looking Sam pointedly in the eye. He nodded, his solemn expression belied by his amused, dancing eyes.

The light perfume, revitalized energy, and visibly happier demeanor all suddenly made sense. Brennan glanced incredulously between the two of them.

“You two are going on a
date
?”

Sam held up his hands. “Hey, I’m just a paid consultant. I wouldn’t know a date if it called me up out of the blue and asked me to brunch. Certainly not after impromptu drinks together the night before.”

The blush in Bishop’s cheeks deepened.

Brennan shook his head. “This is a dream. A crazy, delusional dream and the Sleepers are coming for me soon.”

“It isn’t a date,” Bishop said firmly. “And I needed a strong drink after the day I had yesterday. Sam happened to be there, and he offered to pay. Then I walked home,
alone
. Which is exactly what will happen today,” she finished, directing the last part at Sam.

True
, chimed the little voice in Brennan’s head.

As he watched them go, his right hand fell unconsciously over his left, where his fingers touched upon the smooth metal of his commitment to Mara. His heart still ached for her after so many years. He waited until Sam and Bishop were out of sight before collecting his things and heading back home.

Jeremy had never
let go of a dream so reluctantly.

He had been reliving a memory, one very familiar to him.

In the Jardin des Anges he stood, admiring the beautiful flowers as an equally lovely specimen of a woman, her arm looped in his, leaned gently into him and rested her head against his shoulder. A harpist played soothing music from an obscure corner of the gardens, the notes dancing softly in the air as they were carried by the wind.

“Annabelle,” he said.

The blonde, blue-eyed girl stirred from her reverie and looked up at him with the most heart-warming smile. “Yes, my love?”

“I think this is the best date we’ve ever been on.”

“Really?” she asked, her smile deepening. “You aren’t bored to tears yet? I was sure that a visit to the Jardin des Anges would finally scare you away.”

“I never said I wasn’t bored,” he grinned, pulling her in for a kiss that lasted several seconds. “But I love you.” Her eyes glittered in response to that. “I love you, and you will have to try so much harder to dissuade me.”

“Mmm. Maybe I don’t feel like trying all that hard,” she cooed, melting into his embrace.

“Good.” He kissed the top of her head.

They started walking toward the exit of the Jardin.

“I’m just glad you didn’t get down on one knee,” Annabelle said. “If I get proposed to someday, I want it to be an intimate moment, not surrounded by strangers.”

Jeremy had his free hand stuck deep in his pocket. He toyed with the small, velvety box that hid there, secreted away until the perfect moment. He feared that moment had just passed.

“A proposal? In the Garden? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

With a jarring transition, Jeremy awoke into the present. He was delirious for several moments as he took stock of the room. The fire had died down to smoldering embers, and the warmth of the room had greatly diminished with it. His head pounded and he was reluctant to leave the embrace of his bedcovers. He probably would have succumbed to the allure of further sleep if he hadn’t smelled breakfast cooking.

Outside, the day was already well underway. Flowers of red and orange and blue opened up happily to the sun, greedily drinking in its energy. Even further, the orchards were in full bloom with pears and apples.
But not peaches
, Jeremy reminded himself. And even further out beyond those, almost invisible from the window, he could just make out the broad, rounded tops of the black walnut grove. A murder of crows flew in that direction.

The hardwood floor was cool on his bare feet and Jeremy hurried to slip on a pair of loafers. His bandages, he noticed by way of the mirror, had been changed. There was only a small, bright dot of red right over the source of the throbbing pain he felt. He was having difficulty wrestling with his father’s memories; they felt so
real
, as real as any memory properly his own.

“Get your breakfast while it’s hot or all of this will be for naught!” his mother called out loudly. Jeremy groaned inwardly at her rhyme as he padded his way quietly down the hallway to the kitchen.

To call the Scott country home a ranch was something of an understatement. Strong, wooden beams, as thick and rough as freshly felled trees, framed the residence over an area about the size of an acre. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the south walls, and the golden sunlight filled the main lounging room. Shelves had been built into the chairs and couch, each one filled with books of all sizes and colors. Hardwood flooring was covered here and there by soft area rugs, upon which sat the furniture.

Adjacent to the lounging area was the kitchen; all polished stone and smooth granite, the kitchen was very modern with an aesthetic feel that somehow meshed with the natural décor of the rest of the house. Inside was his mother, with an apron around her waist and her blonde hair pulled back into a bun.

“Hi, honey,” she said, smiling sweetly at him as he entered. “I’m glad you’re finally awake, it’s been so quiet all morning.”

“Morning, Ann—uh, Mom,” he replied, covering his slip-up with a yawn. “I slept like the dead.”

She looked at him worriedly for a moment.

“Breakfast,” Jeremy said quickly, gesturing. “Smells good. Pancakes?”

“Of course, my baby’s favorite.”

“Mom,” he groaned. He was hardly a baby anymore.

“Pancakes are just about finished, and I have scrambled eggs coming up in a few minutes. There’s bread waiting to be toasted, butter and jam on the table. I’m guessing you want milk?”

“Yes, please,” he said.

“Well you know where to find it,” Annabelle replied, gesturing toward the fridge. He grinned to himself. She hadn’t changed a bit in the twenty-three years he’d known her.

Jeremy frowned.

She was his mother. She was also Annabelle. His head throbbed as he struggled to make those two facts, the two sets of memories he held, compatible with one another.

His mother saw the stages of Jeremy’s confusion play across his face but said nothing.

Another thready pulse of pain, only a minor irritation, and Jeremy shelved the problem. He poured himself a glass of milk from the carafe in the fridge and sat down at the table. In addition to the food his mother had listed, there was also sliced ham on a large plate, each sliver the size of Jeremy’s hand.

“Wow, Mom, you made
way
too much food for just the four of us.”

“The two of us, actually.” His mother glanced at the door with a look of irritation. “Your father watched over you while you slept, but he was on his way right back to the city at the first light of day. He promised that it would only be for the morning, to finish the business meeting that was interrupted yesterday. He’ll be back by this afternoon,” she said, wearing her best smile for him.

If memory served him, he knew now that the cheer was false. Jeremy wasn’t fooled. But he could still beg ignorance, for his mother’s sake. He smiled in return as he sliced his stack of pancakes into quarters.

“You said the two of us. What about Ellie?” he asked.

His mother shook her head. “Wild child, that one. I’ve been trying to get her inside, but she’d rather get her hands and knees dirty chasing after rabbits.”

Jeremy shrugged. “Her loss, more for me,” he said, spearing a healthy portion of ham with his fork and depositing it on his plate. He ate like a ravenous wolf. He had never consumed as much in his life as he did that morning. The stack of pancakes, buttered and drowned in syrup, hardly made a dent in his appetite. The slices of ham, a half dozen total and each slice as thick as his pinky finger, brought his hunger down to a level approaching “gnawing”. He followed the first tall glass of milk with an equal amount of orange juice. His thirst slaked, he scooped up the scrambled eggs with his pieces of toast and put them down with bites of prodigious size.

His mother smiled and filled her plate with a quarter as much food. “Easy, Jay, don’t forget to chew.” She regarded him a moment. “Or breathe.”

Jeremy attempted to respond, stuffing food into his cheeks to make room for his mouth to work. It was completely unintelligible.

“Mum,” he finally managed. It came out British-sounding by accident, by virtue of the food still in his mouth. “How did you manage to make—well,
everything
—taste so good?”

“Why, thank you, sweetheart. But it helps when the person eating it has been knocked on the head first.” Her eyebrows furrowed with concern. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“I’m feeling much better now,” he said, smiling. He looked outside for a moment; Ellie ran past the window, giggling, followed closely by a small, red-furred squirrel. Jeremy’s eyes returned to meet his mother’s. “Mom, I’m curious how you and Dad met.”

“Really?” she asked. “Surely we’ve mentioned it to you before, when you were younger. You probably just forgot.”

He frowned and reflected, searching his memories. His father’s recollections threatened to crowd out his own, though, and he struggled to find an original memory of his that told of his parents’ first meeting.

“It’s okay if you forgot,” his mother interjected, “I don’t mind talking about it.” A small smile fluttered on her lips. “Your father was a very charismatic man when he was younger. Very charming. The two of us went to university together, as you know, though he was two years ahead of me.” She pursed her lips in concentration. “It was the end of November, I remember. All of us were preparing for our end-of-term exams. And your father, well, he was in his senior year and already had a job lined up after graduation. It didn’t matter what grades he received in the end, so long as he passed and got his diploma.”

Here she paused, spreading her hands in front of her, a cautionary gesture. “You’ll have to take his word for it, because he only told me this story after we were already dating for several months, but he
swears
that the first time he saw me his whole life changed. Heart skipped a beat, jaw dropped to the floor, tripped up head over heels; he was such a romantic back then, your father.

“Anyway,
I
am sure that I looked like a train wreck. My hair was a mess, I wasn’t wearing any makeup; I had been practically living in the library for the last several days. And in walks your father, tall and handsome, with a nice smile and kind eyes, and the moment he saw me, I knew.”

She leaned in conspiratorially. “I knew he would be the death of me. He was all grace and collectedness and I was a mess, flustered over finals and papers for which I was in no way prepared. His eyes met mine and he walked directly toward me, never breaking stride from entering the room, and stopped just a half-step away from where I was seated. He said—and I’ll never forget this—he said, ‘When did angels stop living in the Jardin des Anges and start studying in the library?’”

Jeremy choked on his last piece of toast, snorting with sudden laughter. “He said that?” he asked incredulously. His mother laughed as well.

“Your father has always had a way with words. He knows
exactly
what to say, as well as how and when to say it. If he had been any less serious, I would have blown him off, and if he had tried an actual, suave pickup line, I would have screamed at him in frustration to let me study in peace.” She chuckled to herself. “As it was, I was speechless. It was my jaw’s turn to drop, and I just stared at him with wide eyes. He had spoken loud enough for the entire room to hear, which only made it more surreal.”

“So what happened next?” Jeremy asked.

Ellie burst into the house, slamming open the screen door with youthful exuberance as she cried “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” and threw herself into her mother’s embrace. Only too late did Annabelle realize that her daughter was liberally covered in grass, leaves and mud. Lots of mud. Jeremy grinned to himself. Perhaps he had given too much credit to his sister’s maturity.

“Ellie!” she cried out. Her white apron was already soaking up the moist mud. She sighed. “Jeremy, do you mind? I’ve got to make sure this one is cleaned up,
right
now
.” She emphasized the last words at Ellie, who squealed in delight as she was tickled under her arms. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story later?” she suggested.

Jeremy made a split-second decision and steeled himself against the nausea he knew was coming. “Sure thing, Mom,” he said, touching her lightly on her exposed arm. A rush of memories flooded over him, disorienting in speed and vividness, and he was thankful that he was already sitting down.

Before she had even stood from the table, Jeremy knew everything.