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Finn held up the warrant. The man snatched it.
"An investigation into the death of that Portia Kane?" he said, voice rising. "She was murdered, wasn't she?" He jabbed a bony finger at the super. "If there's been a murder, you'd damned well better tell us."
Finn plucked the warrant from his fingers, pushed open the door and sidestepped through. The super's hand shot up, telling Finn to wait.
"I know my way around." Finn pushed past the super's outstretched hand. "You take care of this."
He slid in before the super could stop him. Damon walked to the win dow and looked out. Finn started to search. The voices in the hall faded, presumably as the super gave in and went to check the drain.
"I don't know where she is," Damon said after a minute, still looking out the window. "I know that's what you're wondering and I wish I did know, because you're right. She needs to come forward and get this cleared up."
Finn nodded and resumed searching. When he went into the bedroom, he knew something had changed. The closet door was open - it had been closed when he'd been here - every door and drawer shut, bed made, not an item out of place. He checked it out, but couldn't see anything.
He returned to the living room and found Damon still standing at the window.
Finn cleared his throat. "This morning you were going to tell me your story. How you came back."
"I never left." Damon turned around. "After I died, I was standing on the road, looking down at my body, thinking 'Ah, shit, so much for being home in an hour.' That's what you think, you know. Not 'Holy crap, my life is over.' Anyway, there I am, thinking of her, and then there's this..."
"Light?"
"Sorry. No light. Just a... pull. Like when you're deep asleep on a Monday morning and the alarm goes off and you can just barely hear it. I guess I wasn't ready. So I hit the cosmic snooze button."
"So that's it? You want to stay, you stay?"
"It's a little more complicated. I dug in my heels, though. I needed to stay a little while, make sure Bobby was okay."
"Bobby?"
"Robyn. That's what I called her, because - " He shook his head. "Anyway, I stayed to make sure she was okay, only she wasn't."
Damon was quiet a moment before continuing. "The thing about Robyn? She's always in control. Day before our wedding, the bakery calls to say they're overbooked. So what's she do? First she demands a refund and negotiates a free cake for my parents' thirtieth anniversary. Then she calmly reschedules her manicure so she'll have time to bake our wedding cake." His smile faded as fast as it came. "Point is, whatever you throw at her, she can handle it. But this? This was too much. Too sudden. Too senseless. When she couldn't make sense of it, she just... shut down."
"So you've been following her. What did you see that night? At Bane?"
"I haven't seen Bobby since she got to L.A. It sounded like a great plan, sticking around, making sure she was okay, but it didn't take long to see some serious flaws in the logic. What if she's not okay? What the hell can I do about it? I can't talk to her, can't touch her. I can only watch her suffer."
He addressed the window again. "Whatever grand power let me stay also ran out of patience. When Bobby came to L.A., I lost her. Eventually I found out she'd taken a job with Portia Kane and, when I got over the shock of that, I figured finding Bobby would be simple - Portia Kane isn't exactly a recluse. But whenever I get close to her, something blocks me. If they can't make me cross over, they're going to take away my reason for staying."
"That doesn't seem to be working out too well."
A flash of white teeth. "Yeah, I'm stubborn. I know Bobby will get better; I just need to see it. So I - "
The super hurried in, breathing hard. "So sorry. He is always complaining. Not like Miz Peltier."
"I think I'm done here. Just one question. The bedroom closet door. It wasn't open when I came through here last night."
"Oh, yes, that was the girl. Miz Kane's cousin."
"Cousin?"
The super explained that Portia Kane's cousin had come by earlier to pick up a shirt Peltier had dry-cleaned for Kane.
"She talked to the other officers. They said it was okay."
The officers hadn't mentioned it to Finn when he'd stopped by their car. An oversight? He doubted it.
"So what did she take?"
