Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest
6.
Come Saturday, Leda wondered what she was supposed to wear to go meet a cop and talk about crime. Usually, she dressed in “professional adult-lady drag,” in case any clients (or potential clients) showed up at her tiny Columbia City office. Or if she was headed to Castaways, maybe she’d wear something with a touch of bling. A shimmery top, to glisten in the stage lights.
In her downtime, it was usually leggings and tees with boots and a jacket. The weather was cool enough for jackets again, and not too wet just yet.
She was overthinking this.
If Niki were there, she would’ve agreed, and then whipped out something from her own wardrobe for Leda to borrow. She was a little taller, and a little more “blessed” in the torso real-estate department, but they could swap back and forth on most things. They even wore the same size shoe, which was convenient.
But Niki was off at some train thing in Snoqualmie, because Matt was nerdy for trains and Niki was nerdy for Matt.
“I’m not trying to impress this guy.”
No commentary from the absent Niki, who might or might not have agreed.
“I want him to think I’m a civilized professional, but I’m not actually a professional psychic or anything. I’m only a professional clairsentient if you count Matt paying me in free drinks. That counts, right? Does that count?”
She shot Brutus a look.
Brutus stared at her from his tank, looking much like a tiny, damp Grover puppet. He was blue with red highlights on his fins, and he was generally a laid-back sort of betta fish—contrary to the “fighting fish” reputation. Leda had picked him up on a whim at a street fair, along with a half-gallon bowl—which had swiftly been replaced with a gallon bowl with rocks and a small plant inside it. Then came a two-and-a-half-gallon tank, about the size of a toaster. At present, he was swimming in a five-gallon fancy-pants tank with filters and hoses, a veritable forest of live and silk plants, plus a couple of snails that Leda had not expected (and had not yet named). They’d come in with the plants, that’s what a pet shop girl had told her. No big deal, as long as they didn’t multiply too much.
Leda did not know how she felt about the volunteer snails. She did not know what she would do if they multiplied too copiously. She didn’t want an army of snails, but she also couldn’t imagine just… swiping them out and flushing them down the toilet.
The snails were a conundrum.
Brutus had not yet voiced an opinion on them either way.
She held up two black T-shirts that were more or less identical. “Give me a hand, Bru. What do you think? Which one?”
Brutus declined to venture a preference. He’d figured out that she wasn’t going to feed him, and he wandered off to tuck himself beneath his favorite leaf.
“Thanks. You’re a big help.”
She went with a long black T-shirt over black leggings with gray pinstripes—so nobody could accuse her of wearing all black. Even though she did top it all off with a long black sweater and black knee-high boots. It wasn’t really cold enough for the boots, but they were very comfortable and she didn’t know how much walking she could expect to do.
She grabbed her purse and went out the door.
She and Grady Merritt had spent half an hour on Friday arguing via text message about where to meet and how. They’d finally settled on a hotel bar out in Shoreline, which was a bit of a drive for Leda—but she’d refused Grady’s offer to pick her up, so she was stuck in traffic and arrived twenty minutes late.
“Sorry about that,” she said as soon as she saw him. “I guess it was my turn to get stuck in traffic.”
“Hey, it worked out for me—maybe it’ll work out for you, too.” He stood to greet her, hand outstretched. “Welcome to the crime scene. Sort of.”
He was stationed by a window with a copy of the local magazine The Stranger and a cup of coffee. It probably wasn’t good coffee. The bar’s carpet was clean, and all the furniture matched, but this hotel was half a step up from a Motel 6, at best. He was drinking the coffee anyway. Maybe he was desperate. Maybe his taste buds had been shot off by bad guys.
She shook his hand and slipped into the seat across from him. “I meant to text you when I left the house, but I forgot. Sorry.”
He sat down. “It’s fine.”
“I know, right? It’s a big fine, if a cop sees you texting and driving. And you’re a cop, so… I’m sorry.”
“No—I meant that I don’t care. I can entertain myself for half an hour, no big deal. You’re here, that’s the important bit. Stop apologizing.”
“Oh, good sir—I have not yet begun to apologize.”
“Then I look forward to hearing the rest.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. She let out a short, relieved laugh. “I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’m nervous.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about, I promise. If this works out and I get a fresh lead… awesome. If it’s a bust, I’ll pick up the pieces of my shattered life and move on. The case is stalled anyway. It’s not like you’re going to hurt anything.”
“Of course I could hurt something! I’m very good at screwing things up,” she protested. “What if I point you to the wrong person? What if you arrest the wrong guy and the real killer goes free!”
“I’m not going to arrest anybody based on any psychic findings you may provide. I swear.”
That made her feel a little better. “All right, then. How do we do this?”
Grady hesitated, and Leda had the very strong non-psychic feeling that he’d never done this before, either. “I can’t just give you a bunch of insider police information about the case in question, but plenty of details made it to the media. I can give you that much, and a little bit extra if I decide that you can keep your mouth shut.” He fiddled with the magazine in his hands, then folded it in half and set it aside. “I thought about bringing you in cold, just to see what would happen. Then I thought that you might make better connections if you had more information. If you have a basic framework of events to draw from, you might recognize the significance of any random details you pick up. That’s my thinking. My daughter didn’t agree, but she’s not the one with a badge.”
“She thought I should come in blind?”
“Something about giving you too many opportunities to bluff. She gave me a lecture about how TV psychics glean details about people with microphones and research, that kind of thing.”
Leda nodded. “Cold readings are notorious for that—I know exactly what she’s talking about.”
“Have you ever done a cold reading?” he asked, his head cocked to the right.
“What? God, no. Until very, very recently, almost nobody knew about… you know. This. My parents figured it out when I was a kid, but they didn’t exactly advertise it. Dad even gave me this gentle, firm speech about being careful not to frighten people. He always acted like he thought somebody would burn me at the stake if word got around, so I kept it to myself.”
“But your friend knows.”
“Niki? She knows everything. And now that I’ve started doing my thing at Castaways… I guess everyone else will find out eventually.”
He frowned. “Castaways? Where your friend suggested we meet up?”
“Yeah, it’s a bar on Cap Hill. Her boyfriend is the manager.”
“Wait, you have an act? In a bar? Is it like… a singing thing? Stand-up comedy? Magic show?”
“A little of all three, if I’m really on my game. Anyway!” She clapped her hands together. “This is a whole new ball game for me, and I’m nervous about it, and I hope I don’t screw it up.”
“Then let’s get started.” He reached into a messenger bag down by his feet and pulled out a folder with some newspaper clippings. Everything was carefully labeled and fastened together with paper clips. He pushed the folder across the table.
Leda glanced through the clippings. “Oh, hey… I think I remember seeing something about this on the news. This happened a couple of years ago, right?”
“About eighteen months ago.”
“Right. Some guy got murdered in a hotel room… oooooh….” She looked up, looked around. “Was it this hotel? Is that why you wanted to meet here?”
“Yes, but don’t holler about it. The hotel would prefer that everyone forget about the whole thing, and I promised the manager that if he let me into the room again, neither one of us would say a word about it.”
“Gotcha. So… no blogging about this very cool thing I’m doing today.”
“You don’t have a blog.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “You googled me.”
“Yes, but it was a very light google. It’s not like I ran a background check. You didn’t google me?”
She hadn’t thought to. She’d taken him at his word. He was a cop! And a client! Why would she google him? Oh, yeah, because he was a strange man she barely knew who’d invited her to check out a crime scene. Maybe that should’ve tripped a few red flags. Too late now.
“I have your name and address, plus all your credit card information on file for billing purposes. I felt like that was enough.”
If Niki had been present, she would’ve given her a high five for such a clean save.
But Niki wasn’t there. Leda couldn’t tell if Grady believed her, but he acted like he did, bobbing his head in a mildly impressed nod. “I suppose that’s fair.”
“Damn right it is.” She looked down at the clippings. “Huh, so this is where Christopher and Kevin Gilman met their end. Like I said, I recall the case but I’d forgotten their names.”
“No reason you should’ve remembered them. Their deaths were on the local news for five seconds, then everybody forgot it when the next thrilling murder occurred, maybe forty-eight hours later. But here’s what we know for sure, all public information: Christopher Gilman was the CEO of an internet start-up called Digital Scaffolding. He established the company with his brother, Adam, back in 2012—so he really beat the spread. Most start-ups like that fold within a year or two.”
“What did the company do?”
“Consulting work for Amazon, mostly. As I understand it,” he qualified. “Look, I’ll be honest: tech is not my strong suit.”
“Mine, either. I’d like to say that the details probably aren’t important, but we don’t really know what’s important right now, do we?”
“Well, I know more than what I’ve got in this folder, but I can’t discuss it.”
“Okay, so just the public facts, then.” She scanned a couple of columns, picked up the next little clump of newsprint, and scanned that, too.
“Chris was found shot to death in his hotel room, and his son was found in a similar state, out in the parking lot. Conventional wisdom says that the dad was probably killed first, then the son walked in on the murder. The killer chased him out to his car and shot him. Forensics couldn’t tell for absolute certain, but our working theory suggests there were no more than a couple of minutes between the two killings. It all went down around three in the afternoon, so nobody was coming and going for lunch, or dinner, or drinks yet. The place was pretty quiet.”
“Do you think Kevin was running for his car?”
“They found his body on the ground beside it. His hand was in his pocket, reaching for his keys—but the murderer had a gun, and he was either lucky or a decent shot. He only missed once, and the bullet struck the car. The second shot is what killed Kevin. It caught him in the back, right below his neck.”
“I, um… I don’t see any mention of that in this paperwork.”
He shrugged. “So I gave you a smidge of extra info. Don’t tell nobody.”
“I most definitely will not. But this was eighteen months ago? Plenty of people must’ve come and gone from the room since then.”
“They left it shut for a while, then hired a trauma cleaner to bring it up to snuff again. It’s empty at the moment, and I have”—he tapped the messenger bag beside him with his foot—“things I’m not supposed to share… that I’ll definitely show you anyway.”
“You’re really going out on a limb here, aren’t you?” she asked.
He shook his head and gazed balefully at the clippings. “This case has never made any sense, and we’ve never had any real leads. Something about it just… stuck in my craw, as they say.”
“Who says that?”
“My late wife’s family, in North Carolina. They have a wide selection of colorful expressions in circulation out there.” He used his index finger to move a few of the paper scraps around. “Consensus is that the murders were part of an interrupted robbery… but that explanation never felt right. This isn’t that kind of hotel, you know what I mean? We’re in the wrong part of town for a cheap shakedown, and this isn’t the kind of place that a tech CEO would choose for legitimate business activities.”
The restaurant manager sauntered by with a plate of pungent chicken wings and a lifted eyebrow.
“No offense,” Grady called over his shoulder.
When he was gone, Leda asked, “You think he was running something else on the side?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. But I can’t prove it. Since the case is cold now, nobody gave a damn when I checked out some old evidence. So here’s some stuff for you to… look at, or hold. Or whatever it is you do.”
Perfect! The only skill she’d been practicing might prove useful to somebody after all. Then she realized how cautious he’d been with his phrasing. “Wait a minute. Nobody gave a damn that you were leaving the precinct with evidence… or were you just real careful, and lucky that nobody noticed?”
He grinned. “I like you. You’re quick.”
She grinned back. “Like you said about cops, you want a psychic who pays attention to details.”
“Damn right I do. Are you ready to give it a go?” He whipped out a key card.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He stood up, closed the folder, and handed it to her. Then he collected his bag. “Great. Let’s do this.”