“Thank you, ma’am.” Grayson took the folder. “We’re gonna need samples sent to the Empath Initiative as well.”
“We’re on it,” Officer Fortin promised. “You need anything, you just ask.”
They left Grayson alone in the room, and he began to methodically work his way through Marie Pelletier’s possessions. There was a winter coat, a scarf and hat set—no matching gloves, obviously, since she’d been wearing the empath ones. The hat was torn in the back, and everything was splattered with blood. There was also a small canvas satchel, which hadn’t held a wallet or phone but did have lip balm, a few nice pens, and a paperback novel with a crisp, new spine. He examined the book, but there was no receipt within it, and the novel itself looked to be some kind of sweet, cozy romance, exactly the kind you’d expect an empath to have.
There were no rings or bracelets, but they weren’t very convenient for empaths, with the gloves. No earrings either, but piercings and tattoos tended to be a mixed bag—empaths could tolerate their own pain, but not the sight of it happening to others, so you’d never find one in a tattoo or piercing parlor. The only jewelry was a gold necklace with a small heart pendant. Grayson turned the pendant over and ran his thumb over the engraved3:16on the back.
He moved on to the empath gloves, laying them out palms up. No bloodstains, but if she’d died quickly enough, she wouldn’t have had time to touch the wound on the back of her head. No dirt stains either. There’d been snow on the ground, maybe enough that the gloves hadn’t touched grass or mud.
He turned the cuffs down to show the serial numbers. As Marist had said, they were faded to the point they were impossible to read in places. American empaths would never have gloves long enough to fade like this; they got new pairs every year. But then, too many Americans were also paranoid, and the public needed reassurance that the empaths were wearing the very latest anti-empathy technology, even if there were no upgrades some years. The wastefulness had been a heated point of contention with the empaths until Stone Solutions had promised to upcycle the old ones.
Marist had said these gloves were linked to a shipment to Toronto two years ago. Except the rest of the gloves were in perfect condition—not only clean, but no noticeable wear and tear like you’d expect from an item worn daily for two years. Maybe Marist had the shipment number wrong. It wasn’t like you could see the whole serial number.
He took pictures and sent them to a heavily protected contact in Portland who specialized in empath-related research and development. Grayson added a note with it:How old do these look to you?
He picked up the right glove to better see the fading on the serial number. Most folks didn’t realize that empath gloves had a faint metallic scent from the heavy metal threads woven in—it wasn’t a strong enough scent to be picked up by normal people, but Grayson’s sensitive nose always caught it. As he breathed in the faint, penny-like scent, however, he picked up a hint of something else from the inside of the glove—sharp and medicinal, reminiscent of hospitals and rubbing alcohol.
The footsteps came down the hall again, and Officer Maguire knocked on the door before opening it. “The witnesses are here,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Grayson gestured at the gloves. “Were these cleaned?”
“Absolutely not.” She looked bewildered by the question. “The evidence has been left as intact as possible.”
Interesting. He snapped a couple more pictures, then followed Officer Maguire deeper into the station.
The witnesses were a pair of women who’d arrived together, marathoners who’d been at the park to get a run in before the snowstorm hit. They’d just returned to their car in the parking lot when a man had staggered out from the tree line.
Grayson questioned them separately, but they told a similar story: the man hadn’t talked or made any noise, but he was bleeding profusely. They both had assumed he had a head wound, but when Grayson carefully pressed, both admitted they hadn’t seen a cut, just blood all over the man’s face.
The women had called to him, but the blood-covered man had ignored them, scrambling into a car and driving off. The women had immediately called the police, who arrived fifteen minutes later and found the body.
After the interviews, Grayson sat in the quiet room for a moment, thinking.
An unresponsive man with a bloody face could have been an empath’s thrall, bleeding from the eyes. Could Marie Pelletier have been corrupted and somehow her thrall had turned on her and murdered her? Grayson had never seen or heard of that happening. And yes, Reece had taught him that the Dead Man didn’t know everything about empaths, but a thrall’s devotion was absolute; hard to believe anything could ever make one turn on their empath maker.
There were many others in the field who might hypothesize that the corrupted empath was a second empath, who’d sent a thrall after Ms. Pelletier.
But Grayson had been building a private theory over the last several months, and he didn’t think he believed there was a second empath either.
He finally left the station with more questions than answers, but maybe the morgue would hold another clue.
It didn’t matter how many times Gretel explained to her dad thatEyes on Empathswas an independent blog; Beau still expected her to show up and help when American Minds Intact hosted an event. Which meant she was on her parents’ couch way too early on a Saturday morning, supposedly reviewing the privacy conference’s registration list but actually secretly working on her latest blog post on her phone, when she heard Beau on his own phone in the dining room.
“I always have a minute for you,” Beau was saying.
He had a tendency to orate like he was at a podium, even on the phone. Gretel kept an eye on her phone and the article from yesterday’s local Burlington paper, about a woman’s body discovered in a park just outside the city—edited an hour after it had gone up, maybe to remove any reference to the victim being an empath?—as she reached into her bag for her headphones.
“Naturally I continue to be devastated by what happened to Hannah,” Beau said dramatically. “And of course, I would never call it a boon, but yes, we’ve certainly been making friends since her death.”
Gretel paused.
“Obviously more senators signing onto her bill,” Beau went on, “and AMI has enrolled record numbers the past three weeks with no sign of slowing.”
He seemed to listen for a moment, then chuckled. “Yes, well, as Cedrick Stone was fond of saying,the best defense is a good offense. AMI has always agreed. As you know, several of our local members are active or retired from duty, and we’re up to four officers in the Seattle chapter now.”
Gretel straightened, leaving her headphones untouched.
“Mind you, even with police members on our books, I haven’t been able to get a decent account of whatever happened to Cedrick on that roof,” said Beau. “We’ve filed five public records requests but every document we get back is redacted to the point of useless. I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about that?”
