Page 110 of The Turning of the Tables

Even weirder, I had to genuinely wonder if maybe hedidknow me. Did that mean that I was an easy person to read? Simple and straightforward? And if I was, was that a bad thing or a good thing? I’d always liked to think of myself as an optimist, although I hadn’t been terribly optimistic since contracting Arcana.

And if he knew me, then what did it mean that I didn’t feel like I really knew him? I mean, I knewthingsabout him. I knew that he liked pastrami and pimento cheese. I knew he likedStar Warsbetter thanStar Trek, and that he preferred beer to wine. I knew he liked chocolate and coffee, separately and at the same time.

But he wouldn’t tell me his birthday.

I hadn’t asked him since that first time, when we’d barely known each other a few days, so maybe he would now. But I was too afraid of rejection to ask.

And yes, that seems stupid and silly, even to me. Oh no, this guy won’t tell me his birthday. How devastating.

Knowing his birthday wasn’t the point. It was the fact that he wasn’t willing to share parts of his life with me. And yes, I am fully aware that I had agreed that we weren’t going tohavea relationship: Rules Two and Three. But it also very much seemed like we’d moved into some strange in-between space that was in between not-a-relationship and a-relationship that wasn’t quite friendship and wasn’t romance, but also wasn’t just this-guy-I-know.

I knew what I wanted it to be. And Elliot had been clear what he didn’t want it to be. Unfortunately, those were the same thing.

Quincy calledme later that afternoon to tell me to watch the news that night if I wanted to see footage of Maginot and Maza arresting the Arcana Killer.

I asked if they were sure.

“Maginot is, yeah,” she replied, and her voice sounded tired.

“You don’t seem excited about it,” I observed.

“I miss you,” she told me. “They didn’t eventryto hire anyone, and yesterday I got a two-line email telling me that they had just eliminated the position so I shouldn’t expect a new partner. We’re just going to rotate the way we do when someone’s sick.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” I said, trying to decide how I felt about that. I mean. Itwasa terrible idea. It was going to lead to burnout, because when someonedidget sick, everyone else was either going to have to work overtime or shorthanded. And someone was sick or on vacation or somewhere at least eighty percent of the time, so that just meant that they were all going to be exhausted.

But at the same time, some part of me felt a little bit pleased that they weren’t even going to try to replace me. And that pleasure went away the instant I realized it also meant that I wouldn’t be able to apply for my own job back, since there wouldn’t be a job there to apply for.

It was probably a consequence of a too-low state budget that had been hacked to pieces by the split control over the two parts of the state government as the MFM-Anti-Arcane side fought with the pro-Arcane rights side. But it felt like a great big, official fuck-you to me.

“It sucks,” Quincy confirmed.

“That doesn’t fully explain your lack of enthusiasmabout catching the killer,” I pointed out. “Do you think they arrested the wrong guy?” It happened. I had a lot more confidence in some of the detectives than I did the others, but Maginot and Maza were two of the ones I trusted. I didn’t know their records, but I felt like they either got the right guy or they didn’t get anyone—I’d never felt that they arrested someone just to arrest someone.

“No, he’s the killer,” Quincy replied, her tone confident. “He’s an anesthetist, so he gets put on surgeries from multiple clinics. He was assigned to all the victims, and we even found one more who died in her basement last week, since she’d gotten too sick too fast to go to the hospital or anywhere else.”

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“He was using the chlorhexidine to clean up—swabbing under their nails, washing the bodies clean of anything that might indicate his presence. And then he’d used it on himself, cleaning any wounds caused by his victims attempting to stop him from killing them.”

“But how did he infect them?” I asked.

“Surgical consult appointments,” she replied. “They meet with an anesthetist, who explains to them what is going to happen the day of surgery—about a week before. So then he injected them then—probably some bullshit about it being an antibiotic or something, Maginot didn’t say.”

And most people wouldn’t have known that was unusual—since most people didn’t have multiple surgeries, and he could have avoided people who had and would know better.

“Do we knowwhyhe did it?” I asked Quincy.

“Not actually,” she replied. “Everyone’s got a theory, though.”

“Second donut pool?” I asked her.

Quincy was quiet a moment. “No donut pool,” she told me somberly.

“No donuts?”

“We all agreed—it doesn’t seem right without you there,” she said softly.

That made emotion well up against the back of my throat. “Do me a favor,” I said, sounding a little froggy around the lump.