Chapter Five
“Your car smells like sex, rookie,”Milton grumbled.
“That would be me, not the car,” Jesse said. Driving in St. Louis traffic never presented him with much of a challenge. The roads were near empty, and he even had a fair idea of where he was going for a change. “I was in the middle of getting laid when the call came in. Thought I cleaned up enough.”
“Sensitive nose.” Milton tapped his nose. He was older, somewhere in his fifties, and he preferred to make Jesse drive instead of doing the work himself. “Did she get pissed you went off to play hero?”
“Hewas surprised, I think.” Jesse’s heart thudded a little harder. The first time he came out, he was ten and at a family reunion, blissfully unaware that anyone might not like him. Moving around, meeting new people—he’d found he had to come out a lot more than just the first time. While he tended to find acceptance, the moment between knowing and not knowing how someone would react was always nerve-wracking.
Milton stiffened, and glanced at Jesse out of the corner of his eye. “Didn’t take you for that.”
“Take me for what?” Jesse demanded.
Milton seemed to grasp that he was on the edge of the bigot rabbit hole because he grunted and turned his attention back to the outside world. “Doesn’t matter. And let that deep breath right back out, rookie. I don’t need a lecture on my answers. World’s going to be nothing but ash, why should anything matter? Park there.”
Police cruisers blocked off the lane of Lindell Boulevard in front of the mansion. Jesse eased his car between them and parked behind another car in the driveway. Technically, his car was hanging out onto the street, but the cruisers shielded him.
Before they were even out of the car, a uniformed officer approached. Jesse and Milton flashed their badges and were waved toward the front door.
The mansion was a two-story brick structure, probably built somewhere close to the turn of the twentieth century if Jesse had his architecture right. Like many St. Louis buildings built around that time, it had a stockier, blunt shape. The wrought iron fence was intimidating, but hardly unclimbable. All the lights were on, making it a spectacle. But for all the light and people, even considering the muggy spring evening, Jesse still felt a spike of cold between his shoulder blades.
“What do you know about the family?” Milton asked quietly as they neared the door.
“The Vallesses have been St. Louis social elite for over a century,” Jesse replied. “Ronald is the patriarch of his generation. Renee owns this house and participates in a few local charities. Known to have a pretty extensive art collection.”
She was also a collector of the weird and bizarre, was known to hire spiritualists for exclusive parties, and regularly attended conventions focused on alien lifeforms. When Jesse was in college, he’d seen her on a panel discussing the differences between extra-terrestrials and outer-terrestrials. One came from the stars, the other from another dimension.
The family had had more than its fair share of run-ins with the paranormal. Great-uncle Ephraim had detailed running into one Valless heir on a frequent basis, a few times in private circles. Extremely private, and entirely gay circles.
But those were facts that Jesse didn’t feel the need to share with Milton.
“Guess we’ll see how much of the freaky shit’s still here.” Milton flashed his badge to the cop at the door and moved through.
Jesse held his badge out for the officer to take a longer look, and waited for the officer to nod before heading in.
Light reflected off the polished hardwood floor of the entryway, and brightened the white paint to a smarting intensity. Framed photos decorated a front hall table. Most were older, but Jesse spotted a couple with a young Renee Valless. She had her arms around two friends, and the three of them wore private school uniforms.
A staircase led upward, and there were rooms to the left, right, and farther down a hall. A man and a woman, each with a gold badge on their belts, were conferring, but stopped when they spotted Jesse and Milton.
The man sucked in a big breath, and his face turned beet red. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re here to offer expertise and resources, should you need them,” Milton said. “Rookie, meet Gaines and Hughes, two of the SLMPD’s brightest. Gaines’s the one who looks ready to piss on my grave before I’m in it.”
“Because you screwed my case into the ground,” Gaines snapped.
“Organized crime is within the FBI’s jurisdiction,” Milton replied.
“Yeah, and somehow my murderer walks free and your guy disappeared into WITSEC. Get out of here, Milton. We didn’t call you and we don’t need you.”
“I called them,” a man said from above. During the bickering, he, Renee Valless, and a uniformed cop had come to the top of the stairs. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, and looked ready for a night full of dinner business meetings. The light glinted off his gold wedding ring as he came down the steps, and he fussed with it.
Renee trailed behind him. She wore a gauzy nightgown and a see-through robe. Where the man was glaring and scowling around the room, she seemed not to care that law enforcement filled the entryway and probably the rest of her house. She came down the stairs quietly.
Jesse glanced at the others to see if they could see her too, or if she was some kind of spirit. Milton was grinning a bit too much, and raking his gaze over her. Fucking rude of him, but it proved she was visible to others.
The man cleared his throat. “If you’re done ogling my sister, agents.”
“This one wasn’t ogling.” Renee gently placed her index finger against Jesse’s forehead. Her voice was as ethereal as her presence. “He’s curious.”
