Fire Song (City of Dragons) (29 page)

I squinted at the screen. “Oh my God,” I muttered.

“What?” said Lachlan.

“That’s Dahlia Brooks.” I pointed to a picture of a girl posing with Killian. She was wearing clothes, although they were pretty skimpy. She was kissing him on the cheek, and he was laughing.

The picture changed.

“Where are these pictures coming from?” said Lachlan to Lucy.

“Um, his computer hard drive,” she said. “It’s hooked up to the television. Look.” She sat down on the couch and took out a keyboard and mouse. When she jiggled the mouse, a desktop appeared.

“Can you find that photo again?”

“He’s got thousands of pictures on here,” she said, but she was navigating to the folder where the pictures were kept. She started to scroll through the thumbnails.

I got closer to the screen.

“There.” I pointed. “Stop.”

Lucy stopped.

“Open this one.” I pointed.

She did.

A different picture of Dahlia filled the screen. She was holding a beer and sticking her tongue out at the camera.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Lucy in a small voice. “That’s one of those girls. The one that was missing. The one whose body they just found.”

“I take it you didn’t know her,” said Lachlan.

Lucy was shaking her head, her fingers at her lips. “Why does he have a picture of her?”

“Could I copy these pictures?” Lachlan produced a thumb drive, connected to his keychain.

“I-I guess so,” said Lucy, who still looked stunned.

Lachlan sat down on the couch and plugged the thumb drive in. We watched and waited as the photos copied over.

Lucy was shaking.

The copying was finished. Lachlan pulled out the flash drive. “Where’s your husband right now?”

“At the club, but—”

“Thank you for your time, ma’am.” Lachlan motioned with his head for me to follow and headed for the steps.

I went after him.

“But wait,” said Lucy, standing up. “What does this mean? Did he do it?” She was horrified, stunned, destroyed.

Lachlan went back to her. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, we don’t know what it means. Try to calm down. But in case of the worst, maybe you should pack a bag and have someplace to go that he doesn’t know about. Then—if you decide to confront him—do it in a public place.”

“Oh.” Lucy let out a little sob, shaking her head.

“Only as a precaution,” said Lachlan. “We don’t know anything yet.”

Killian was behind the bar inside the strip club. It was nearly noon, and it was empty inside, only one customer up at the main stage where a drake in lingerie was jiggling her hips. I guessed that during the day, the strippers were all drakes, considering gargoyles had to be stone in the daylight.

“You two,” said Killian. “Damn, I was hoping that you’d found someone else to harass.”

“We just came from your place,” said Lachlan.

“You were at my house?”

“Yes, we had a chat with your wife—”

“Wait a second, what gives you the right to—”

“Why do you have photos of Dahlia Brooks on your hard drive?” said Lachlan.

Killian’s face turned white. “Damn it.”

Lachlan raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know if I’ll find more photographs if I dig deeper, Mr. Henderson. I’m not sure if there are pictures of all of the girls there. Your wife didn’t mind that we copied your photos onto a flash drive, so you can bet I’ll be looking.”

“No, there’s no one else,” he said. “I mean, there are pictures of other girls, but there aren’t any pictures of the other victims.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I knew Dahlia. That was why I went to the search party. I was worried about her.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that before?” I said.

“I knew her pretty well,” said Killian with a sigh. “In a way that my wife wouldn’t have been happy about, if you know what I mean.”

“You were having an affair with her,” said Lachlan.

“She was young and crazy. She wanted to break all the rules,” said Killian. “She said that she was so bored of doing the proper dragon thing, and she wanted to play around in the muck a little bit.” He looked at Lachlan. “If a girl like that wanted to play with you, could you say no?”

Lachlan shrugged. “I’m fairly sure that when you get married, you make a promise to say no to girls like that in favor of your wife.”

Killian laughed a little. “Fair enough. But listen, I’m not guilty of anything other than infidelity. I would never have harmed a hair on Dahlia’s head. I worshiped her. And the other dragon girls? I never met them. To be honest, knowing that she’s dead, it’s been weighing on me a lot. No one knows about our relationship. I can’t just show up at her funeral, you know? How am I supposed to grieve?”

Lachlan just blinked at him.

Killian sighed. “Please. You gotta believe me. I didn’t hurt anyone. I swear it.”

*

“You believe him?” I said. We were sitting in Lachlan’s car, which was still parked in the parking lot behind the strip club.

“I actually do,” said Lachlan. “It was thin, anyway. He has no connection to the other girls.”

“Well,” I said, “does that mean we cross him off the list? Have we crossed Otis off the list?”

“I don’t know.” Lachlan rubbed his forehead.

“Who’s that leave?”

“It leaves Alastair,” said Lachlan.

“And the drake social worker,” I said. “You still think it could be him, right?”

“Oh, hell, I guess we need to go out and look at that house of his,” said Lachlan. “You up for doing that?”

“I guess,” I said. “But are we allowed to do that? I mean, do we need a warrant or something?”

“Well, it’s abandoned and falling down,” he said. “I just want to get an idea if it’s the kind of place that could possibly be used to kill someone, that’s all.”

“Look, why don’t we divide and conquer?” I said. “You go check out the house for the drake, and I can go back and talk to Deena Walsh again. See if I can shake anything loose from her that might help us get a warrant for Alastair’s place.”

“What do you think you could get from her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if I tell her that Sophia’s boyfriend was actually Alastair, maybe she can remember something else about that. Maybe she saw them somewhere. Maybe she’s got evidence of the two of them together?”

“None of that is going to get us a warrant.”

“So, what do we need?”

He scratched his chin. “We need something that would make it likely that the crimes were committed there. And it’s got to be good, because no one wants to get on the bad side of the dragons. So, stuff that might fly with your average citizen just doesn’t cut it when we’re dealing with them.”

“All right,” I said. “Well, maybe I’ll just go over there, then.”

“What?” he said. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Well, I’m his ex-wife, and I can look around and if—”

“If you find anything, it won’t be admissible in court.”

“No, I wouldn’t take anything. But if I found something suspicious, couldn’t I write up an, um, affidavit or something, and wouldn’t
that
help get the warrant?”

He sighed. “Maybe.”

“So, I’ll do it.”

He rubbed his forehead. “No, no, I don’t think you should. It’s a bad idea, because it could bite us in the ass later on. If a prosecuting attorney finds out that Alastair’s ex-wife is investigating him, it’s not going to look good. The truth is, I’ve been backing off on Alastair because I think you’re too close to it. And now, what with us… with, um…” He gestured at me and then back at him. “With whatever happened—”

“I thought we were going to forget about that?”

“The fact is, it’s probably personal for me too.” He leaned back against his headrest, studying the car’s ceiling. “I don’t like that guy.”

“But he’s guilty,” I said. “He did it. It had to be him.”

“Probably, yes,” said Lachlan. “But we don’t want to blow this. So, let’s just go out and look at the drake’s house together, and then we’ll try to come up with a plan of attack for Alastair. But I warn you, Penny, if we get down to Alastair, and there’s no one else we’re looking into, I’m going to have to ask to be taken off the case.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because of the personal thing,” he said. “Like I just explained.”

“Well, then,” I said, “it shouldn’t matter if I do go over there. Because if I find something incriminating, then we just get ourselves taken off the case. But it would be good to move forward instead of looking into all these people who didn’t do it.”

He licked his lips. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Take me back to the hotel,” I said.

“Not if you’re going to do something stupid.”

I pressed my lips together.

“Penny, don’t go to Alastair’s place. Promise me you won’t go.”

I sighed.

“Penny.”

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t go.”

*

But I went anyway. I had to go.

I couldn’t handle this anymore. After that big fake-out, thinking it was Otis and that Alastair hadn’t been guilty, I was shaky. That had been emotionally devastating, but now I knew it wasn’t true, and that meant that Alastair
was
guilty after all. Just like I’d always known deep down.

I had to find evidence, and I had to stop him, and I had to get him locked up.

Somehow, I had to do it, because I was the only person who truly knew him. Deep inside, Alastair was evil, and I knew it. He was more than capable of killing. I thought of all the times that he had come within inches of killing me. Something had always made him hold back, but I had been his mate, as Lachlan had pointed out once. He would have thought I was special.

It took me a good forty-five minutes to drive up to Alastair’s inland house near Delaware.

When I got there, I found it at the end of a long winding driveway, nestled in the woods, far away from anyone else.

But the house wasn’t finished.

It had a roof and walls, but there was no siding. The doors hadn’t been put on. The windows hadn’t been installed.

I wondered how Lachlan had missed that. Maybe he had only found property records and a building permit. Maybe he hadn’t seen pictures or anything.

I parked my car, and I wandered up to the front of the house.

Once this place was finished, maybe it would be impressive, but when I looked through the door, I could see that the interior was only framed out. There were no walls inside, just boards nailed up. They reminded me of prison bars.

I stepped inside.

He still could have done it here.

This was actually a perfect place.

I wandered through what would be the foyer into another large room. I had no idea what this room would be made into. The floor was only poured concrete. There were a few tarps laid out on the floor.

That was what Alastair could have done. Laid out tarps, killed the girls on them, and then wrapped them up and taken them out to be dumped in the ocean.

Alastair had a boat that he could have used.

I walked through that room and into another big room. This one had a wall of cutouts for windows that would overlook the woods.

Leaves had blown in, and they were scattered all over the floor.

I nudged one of the leaves with my foot.

There, beneath it, was a reddish brownish stain.

Blood?

I knelt down to get a closer look. I didn’t want to touch it, because I didn’t want to mess up the evidence…

Actually, maybe Lachlan was right. Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I would leave a stray piece of hair somewhere and they would find my DNA and wonder why I was at the scene.

“I’m screwing everything up,” I muttered to myself.

I took a picture of the stain, though. I hoped this was the evidence we needed. If I showed it to Lachlan, though, he was going to be angry with me, and maybe for good reason.

I didn’t bother to walk back through the house. I climbed out of the window cutouts and walked back to my car.

Which wasn’t by itself anymore, because another car was parked next to it.

Crap.

Alastair’s sister Elizabeth was standing next to my car, her arms folded over her chest. “What the hell are you doing here? How do you even know about this place?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“No, you definitely shouldn’t be here,” she said, advancing on me.

I backed up. “What are you doing here?”

“I come here sometimes,” she said.

“To an incomplete house with no walls?” My pulse was starting to pick up speed, and my thoughts were moving quickly as well. Elizabeth had never really liked me that much. She was fiercely loyal to her brother. But I knew how proper she was, and the thought of her brother with women who were not his mate must have made her crazy. Maybe she blamed those girls.