Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (53 page)

He gave me the side-eye. “Why do I get the feeling you’re up to something?”

“Because you’re an overly suspicious, fancy-brains detective?” I
finished my coffee and took his empty cup from him. He put his
gloves back on and went back to staring at the canal’s surface. The sun
slanting down into the water made it seem more grey than black. “You know, you might never get to bury Father Scarrow. If this is a confirmed death-by-Incorporeal-Human-Entity, they’re going to
shove him in a freezer and study his bits and pieces for years.”

“You’re full of good news today.”

Positive thinking, Marnie.
“Your hair looks good white?”

“Try again.”

“You’re right, it really doesn’t. Gonna dye it?”

“Will that work?”

“I doubt it. It’s ghost-touched hair.”
That’s positivity?
“Mama-Captain will never kill another person,” I offered. “The lost spirits are gone. John Briggs-Adsit, Britney Wyatt, and Barnaby Nowland are at peace.”

“So, there’s that.” He aimed a squint up at the clouds as they went across the sun, cooling us for a moment in shade before
trundling onward and letting the sun return to its snow-melting duty. “Talked to the city about discussing plans with you to relocate the remains.”

The skeletons, those that remained under the pond’s muddy floor, would have to be carefully transferred to one of the Red Hook cemeteries, and Harry had agreed to foot the bill and assume all
expenses for the memorial stone. This project would be a nightmare, years of red tape
and litigations and anthropology surveys, but I’d kinda-sorta
promised an entire congress of ghosts that I’d heard their pleas, and I wasn’t about to leave Canada without at least starting the process. “Thanks. Text me the names and numbers and Harry and I will get on that.”

He nodded. “Simon Hiscott was released on bail. You'll probably need to come back to testify.”

I sucked my teeth. “I don't suppose an attempted murder charge is really necessary, since one would-be plaintiff is now deceased, and I'm not pressing charges. Anyway, where’d he get the gun?”

“It’s his. Registered.” He shrugged. “A shooting sportsman.
How’s your friend Ellie?”

“Didn’t want to see me to say goodbye,” I said.
Positivity!
“But my mom woke my dad up early so he could come to the door and wave. Sure, the only one of my sisters who would see me was, of all
people, Rowena, but the good news is, she doesn’t hate me as much as before. I think. Don’t wanna push it. Maybe I’ll see her when I come back for the trial. I’m having Mr. Merritt drop the scrying
board off to her later so she doesn’t have to see me.”

“That’s nice of you,” Schenk commented, crooking a finger at me and walking to the trunk of his car. “You should have had Mr.
Merritt come say goodbye to me on your behalf so
I
didn’t have to see you.”

“You are a bit of a jerk today,” I mentioned affably. “A gigantic one, on account of how tall you are.”

“I am the Everest of Jerks,” he agreed, popping his trunk. He handed me a soft package wrapped in a plastic grocery bag, folded
and taped. I put one of the empty cups in the crook of my arm to free a hand to take it. “Don’t open this until Christmas.”

“I don’t celebrate Christmas; I’m a witch. Well, my beliefs are fairly syncretic, but I don’t usually do the traditional stuff, mangers and wise men and all that.”

“Then don’t open it until the morning of December twenty-fifth because I asked you not to.”

“I’m opening it right now.”

“I will shoot you.”

I laughed from the belly, and relented. “You and your complete and utter obedience to the law at all times,” I repeated. “I didn’t get you a gift.”

He pointed to the hearse. “Your ass on a plane out of my country is the only gift I need, eh?”

“I’ve enjoyed your company, too, Longshanks.” I smiled
knowingly. He nodded at my smile, and returned it. “Thanks for tolerating me. Harry should send you hazard pay, too.”

“Oh, he did,” Schenk confirmed. “Hey.”

When the sun came blasting out again I had to squint up at him to see. “Yeah?”

“None of this was easy,” he said. His gaze shifted to the imprint of my iPhone in the front pocket of my jeans. “You’re ballsy. When it comes to work, anyway. Maybe some of that courage will follow you home.” He leveled a challenging look in my direction that surprised
me. I knew what he was hinting at immediately: a picture on my phone, a confession over nachos and wings, personal fears, private
doubts, matters of the heart.
Batten.
The thought of returning home to Kill-Notch and his furious, clenching jaw and his hard ass and his hot
glare made my knees weak, but none of that was Schenk’s business. I was about to tell him to butt the hell out of my love life when I
realized that wouldn’t be fair, since I’d just set him up to maybe meet the woman of his dreams not five minutes ago.

“Ballsy, huh?” I said. “We’ll see, Thag.”

He nodded, seeing on my face that I got his drift. “Stay tough, Cinderblock. Take care of yourself, eh?”

I kinda wanted to hug him good bye, but that wasn’t our way;
momentarily thwarted by our unspoken personal space arrangement, I shot him the best farewell smile I could manage. It
didn’t quite feel like enough, but I respected the limitations and went to the hearse. Mr. Merritt had scooted out so he could hold the passenger side door open for me and take the not-exactly-Christmas gift.

I looked back only once, to watch Schenk stroll back to the side of the canal with his left hand in his pants pockets. With his right hand, he took something out of his inside jacket pocket. I knew it was a picture of Britney Wyatt. I watched him until his shoulders fell; then I turned around and faced forward in my seat to give him privacy while he said his other goodbye.

MR. MERRITT ARRANGED
for porters to load Harry and his casket carefully into the belly of the plane with the luggage while I got my ticket. Combat Butler’s goodbye before customs and security was quick and perfunctory. The Blue Sense told me that he didn’t enjoy farewells; he fled back to the hearse like he'd left the kettle on at home. He thought I didn’t catch him sneak a peek back at me
before he left the building. It wouldn’t be the last time he saw me; before leaving North House I’d changed his laptop’s background
picture to a picture of me from my iPhone with my mouth stuffed with cookies, giving him a thumbs-up. I wished I could see his face later when he discovered it. Maybe I’d call him on Skype.

I used the flight to organize my notes for the papers I’d have to write, and jot a list of everyone I thought I’d need to alert first about my discoveries.
Scarrow’s discoveries
. The Church wasn’t going to like it, but they didn’t much like DaySitters anyway, so I could live with
that. The scientific community wasn’t going to like the news, either. Preternatural biology was a flexible field, but the other fields attached to it by necessity — ecology, chemistry, physics — were
highly resistant
to new ideas. The peer review process would be lengthy and fraught with doubt and even hostility; it wasn’t anything I hadn’t
encountered before, but it was never enjoyable to be the bearer of unpleasant, not to mention paradigm-kicking, news.

Chapel was waiting at the arrivals gate when I got to Denver, looking boring but serious in shades of taupe and brown. The sight of him flushed days of stress out of my system; my ex-
dhaugir
, my ever-patient boss, my calm and cautious friend. Looking at Gary, I felt instantly at home. It wouldn’t be dark for another few hours, so Chapel had put the seats down in the SUV so the skycaps could load Harry’s casket in the back, with our luggage stuffed in on either side
of it. Chapel held the passenger door open. I suddenly felt like
hugging
him, and wondered what the hell was happening to me; a few
ghostly deaths and some demon dancing, and I become a softie?

Chapel waited until we were driving before noting, “That’s quite the black eye, Marnie.”

“Taunted a poltergeist.” I mimed a punch in my face. “
Blammo!
Whapped by a ghost fist.”

He favored me with a skeptical glance that I'm sure would have lasted longer if he hadn’t been driving. “The spirits of the departed cannot affect the physical realm.”

“Until one bitch-slapped me, that’s what I thought, eh?”

“And the black hair? Is that a blue streak?”

“Sorry. Wasn’t my idea. Dead girl left her mark on me,” I said, not entirely unhappy about it. If I avoided looking in the mirror, it
hardly bothered me at all. “Could have been worse; Constable
Schenk’s hair went completely white.”

Chapel nodded, and his simple acceptance of my explanations began unknotting my stomach. He was always so easy to be with. I wondered what Batten would think of my hair, and my belly did a funny flutter; I snuck a peek at my ex-
dhaugir
to see if he’d noticed. He seemed oblivious.

 “Agent Chapel. Gary.” I chewed my bottom lip, trying to imagine what de Cabrera would say to encourage my positivity. All that came to me was Schenk’s encouraging voice.
Ballsy.
“We need to talk about work.”

Chapel pulled into heavy Saturday traffic on the I-70 without comment, but I could see a hundred thoughts going through his hazel eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses even without bringing the Blue Sense to bear.

“Remember how we worked together on the Danika Sherlock case?” I reminded him. “Imagine that, but with less ghoul sludge
and fewer heads in mailboxes.”

He asked tentatively, “Are you considering parting from the
PCU? Opening your own business? Working from home?”

“That’d be ballsy, eh? I mean, who would hire me, except for you?”

“What does Lord Dreppenstedt think?”

Harry’s gonna have a shit-fit,
I predicted.
Me? Working alone? Maybe boinking Batten on my days off between writing academic
papers? Harry would dredge up his best expressions of outrage when I told
him. Maybe even the fancy French ones. I wasn’t entirely new to working solo; I had once owned my own business, however briefly, and somewhere, tucked away in a Canadian evidence locker, there was a
business card to prove it. I was currently working on a way to use that as proof that I could manage myself.

“I haven’t discussed it with Harry yet,” I admitted. “I thought I’d run it past you first and see if you thought it was even doable.”

“Are the hours at the lab too much for you?” he asked. “Do you need more time home during the day to watch Harry?”

“Oh, hey, he’ll buy that excuse,” I said, adding that to my mental list. When Chapel cast me a look that said he was more interested in the truth, I said, “I’m thinking I’m not a good fit in the FBI. Rules
and regulations have never been my thing. I mess shit up on a regular basis. Internal Affairs would have a party if I left. Geoff
would bake a fucking cake
without
putting kittens in it. Let’s face it, Boss Man:
your
life would be a lot easier with someone else in UnBio and me on the side. We gave it a shot. We had some success. But I’m a motherfucking handful.” I squirmed in my seat, then realized I didn’t have to pay anyone for swears, here. “I like cursing, Gary.”

He gave a sympathetic little chuckle. “I know you do, Marnie.”

“I don’t like being told off when I screw up. I get enough of that at home.”

He kindly did not point out that perhaps I should stop screwing up, and nodded instead. “Nobody likes their hard work criticized. Your tasks are difficult and often your methods must be unorthodox. I try to make allowances—“

“That’s part of the problem,” I said reluctantly. “You let it go, and then
you
get in shit for it. My mistakes become your mistakes. That’s hardly fair.”

“If that’s the only cost of doing business with you, Marnie, I will gladly continue to pay it,” he said. But I felt the weight he placed on the
if
, and the fact remained that I made his life difficult more often than not, even when he hadn't volunteered to be a pain-sink.

I had run out of points to make, and stared out at the grey-white
skies; we shared a companionable silence as we approached the
Denver/Boulder turnpike.

“Tell you what,” he pulled around an eighteen wheeler that made me think of Krystof Duchoslav chained underneath. “Why
don’t you
sleep on it, and we can talk about it on Monday? Maybe we can
come up with some alternatives or compromises.”

Two days to reconsider. Did I really need it? I felt a surge of disquiet from Unflappable Chapel as the Blue Sense tickled my perceptions, and knew with sudden clarity that, despite my being
difficult – and often an utter liability — SSA Chapel didn’t want me to resign. He felt like he was losing an asset.
An asset?
Chapel valued me. Only the Dark Lady above knew why. I doubted anyone else on the planet felt like that about me. It made me question my decisions again.

“Monday,” I promised. “Bright and early, your office, Boss Man.”

That seemed to assuage his worries. By the time we hit Boulder the sun had settled almost to the horizon. I turned on the radio and let some music soothe our uncertainties, and wondered if Constable Schenk had reprogrammed his presets (or developed an appreciation of perky techno) and figured out how to fix his dashboard clock, or if it was still telling him what time it was. I buried a smile behind my fist and stared out at the passing city lights.

***

When we hit my driveway I felt a familiar yawning emptiness in
the back seat that told me Harry was stirring from rest. Chapel popped the back of the SUV as I hopped out and made boot prints in the first dusting of snow on the driveway, hauling the crisp
mountain air deep into my lungs. One of the cabin’s windows glowed warmly.