Page 98 of The Flame Game

“All of my co-workers abandoned me the day Magnus McGee delivered that cell phone bomb filled with gorgon dust. We should check if Morrison was involved, as we do know his sister was the one who gave him the bomb and ultimately murdered him because he refused to participate in her games.”

“Add it to the other list.”

“These are supposed to be pipe dream additions, Sam!”

“I’m going to have to make sure you give me both of your lists on all future investigations, because these ideas are the exact kind we need when we’re working on identifying a culprit or a motive. Thinking inside of the box is important at times, but creativity is also needed to go along with the understanding that we can’t use sane logic on the insane.”

“Oh. I was using insane logic on this list.”

“And one of the main culprits? Insane. Keep going. Your ideas are good.”

“My co-workers, though?”

“If the goal was to infect you with gorgon dust, and Morrison was somehow linked to their inability to show up to work, then he is an accomplice in the gorgon dust bombing of your apartment. That is considered to be a terrorism event, as it was targeting someone who lived in an apartment complex and is a highly certified government contractor. Well, it could be flagged as terrorism, attempted murder, disruption of the peace, destruction of personal property, and a slew of other misdemeanors with a few felonies added in for good measure. As the dust found in your apartment matched 120 Wall Street, that would link Morrison to 120 Wall Street—and potentially make your former co-workers important witnesses. If anyone was hurt preventing them from going to work, then they’re owed restitution from Morrison, too.”

“This is excessively complicated.”

“The cases I’m brought into usually are—otherwise, the detectives would have already handled everything. This would have been bumped to my desk if I hadn’t become involved in other fashions. As it is, we’re going to be severely scolded by the commissioner for using our vacation time to creatively put ourselves where we might find clues. He’s going to see right through my ploy, but because we have receipts for these locations, he won’t call me out on it—and even if he does, I’d just honestly claim I had wanted to close the book on that part of my life. Closure is important to him. He became a cop because his family never got closure on the murder of his uncle.”

“That’s sad.”

“It is. That case is still open, and it’s in our jurisdiction, so I’ll leave the file out on your desk during a slow week so you can start poking your nose into it. He can’t afford a wayfinder, and his uncle’s body was never found.”

“How does he know he was murdered, then?”

My husband smiled. “That is an assumption—one founded on his knowledge of his uncle, how much he cared for his family, and other factors. Nobody in the family believes that his uncle would have just left them.”

“But amnesia could have happened.”

“And that’s exactly why that’s some serious lack of closure for them. What if his uncle is still alive? Why did he leave? It’s a nagging mystery that hurts his family every time the holidays roll around. So, I’ll leave the file on your desk along with everything we have on the Dowry case, and we’ll go from there.”

“And if we don’t like what we find?”

“That’s sometimes one of the hardest parts of our job, Bailey. We often don’t like what we find. But we’ll decide then. Even the stories with an unhappy ending end that way for a reason… and sometimes, we give the families just enough for them to get some closure without the full story ever coming to light. It depends.”

“But what if he was murdered?”

“Then we bring the killer to justice and give him closure that way.”

“And if he ran away?”

“We find out why—and we get justice for him. Men like that don’t run without a reason.”

I nodded, and I retrieved the next sea bug roll out of the carry out box so it could fall victim to my anxiety and my hunger. “And if he was involved with an accident and has amnesia or something like that?”

“We involve his family and do what’s best for everybody. That one is hard, because if he’s having a great life now, it’ll be tough to meld his old and his new life together, but it can be done. That’s what therapists are for.”

“Hey, Quinn?”

“Yes?”

“What do you mean he can’t afford a wayfinder? Am I not a good enough wayfinder for him? He thinks I can do this cop thing, but I can’t wayfind? I can do it, and I can do it better. And cheaper, since I’m not an asshole enough to charge him for having the magical equivalent of a temper tantrum while looking for something.”

My husband laughed. “One disaster at a time, Bailey. One disaster at a time. If you want to help him find his uncle, I’m certainly not going to stop you, but I will set some ground rules for the investigation.”

“I mean, we have a map in the back, and I’m pretty sure I saw you bring my junk for this. It’d take like five minutes. I’m fueled! Pull over.”

“You want to do this now?”