Page 20 of Dead Beat

But they were so much worse than that. Not villains. Just another bunch of amateurs.

The dinner finished with a wave of chatter over the disappearances, the victims—which were “members of the Yale community” and which were firmly town—how long Reiter had been active, though Alex wasn’t sure he’d ever gone dormant at all.

Turner had pulled unpaid overtime to dig into the disappearances since he had no logical way to connect a father vanishing from a football game at UConn with a tourist from Arizona never returning to her hotel room after a day of shopping in Westport. If you didn’t know a demon was preying on the populace, it all seemed arbitrary, and his boss wasn’t going to let him waste valuable hours on cold cases.

It was strange to watch the detective working the room now, smiling, shaking hands. “I forgot how good he is at this,” she said to Darlington.

“He’d make quite the congressman.”

They had both seen that possible future for Turner, and watching him charm a room full of the Yale elite, Alex could believe it might come to pass. His wariness and frustration had been hidden away so thoroughly it was like a glamour taking hold, the irritable, dogged detective vanishing behind a slick veneer, his anger buried deeper than one of Reiter’s victims. Alex would have given good money for a little of that talent. She’d never been able to make the illusion of respectability stick.

She was relieved when the group began to disperse, heading home to apartments and condos or catching trains to the suburbs. She sensed Alban Reed approaching as she shook hands with the woman in the navy sweater set—Deena? Doris? Alex couldn’t remember her name, only that she had created a synthetic form of the stimulant basso belladonna and had an under-the-table contract with the US military for its use.

Reed kissed Deena/Doris on both cheeks as she said her goodbyes and then turned his attention to Alex. “How is your mother enjoying her new home?”

“She likes it a lot,” Alex said, waiting. Reed was a predator of some kind; she knew that. She just wasn’t sure if he was a standard finance shark or someone she actually had to watch out for.

“I approved that expense. A bungalow in Los Angeles is no small thing, even in Reseda.”

“Cost of doing business, am I right?” Alex wasn’t going to thank him. She’d put her life on the line for Lethe multiple times and covered up murders and scandals alike. If they wanted continued compliance, they could pay for it.

“A mercenary nature,” he said pleasantly. “I appreciate that. Are you satisfied with the results of this evening’s meeting?”

“Of course.”

“And a liar too. Well, I should be grateful for it, since you’ve lied on Lethe’s behalf plenty of times.” That might just be the Lethe equivalent of Thank you for your service. “Do you know why the board took no real action tonight?”

Reed was playing the outsider, as if he’d been a mere observer here. “Does Lethe ever take action? We’re just the cleanup crew, right?”

“Lethe is and has always been a pretense, a false promise from one institution to another. Nothing will be done because no one in this room gives a fuck about Reiter or his victims and never has.”

Now Alex was paying attention. He was being honest. Or at least he wanted her to think so.

“Then what was all this about?” she asked. “Why convene the board and call us to New York?” Alex had her own reasons for wanting the meeting, but Reed had no way of knowing that.

“It was the easiest way to get to speak with you in some degree of privacy.”

“Easier than making the drive to New Haven?”

He gave a rueful laugh, and Alex knew that to everyone else in the room it looked like they were having a warm chat. Only Darlington and Turner were watching, only they looked like they could smell the rot on this man.

“I think not. Bad things happen to the men of Lethe where you’re involved, Alex Stern. Your mentor, Daniel Arlington. Dean Sandow. Michael Anselm. I think you’ve slid by so far either through guile or the profound negligence of the board.”

Was this it? Was this where he ousted her and told her not to return next semester? Where they chose a new Dante to study with Darlington and cast her out into the cold? But then why the dinner, the performance, the reminder of what Lethe had done for Mira?

“What exactly do you want, Mr. Reed?”

“Alban, please.” He smiled again, and she realized it was a tell—the look of a man who knew he had a winning hand. “I want a new nexus, Wheelwalker.”

9

They stayed silent until the train burst from the tunnel and into the night, the track unspooling before them like a thread to follow out of the labyrinth.

Darlington had slipped a little zolpidem into Walsh-Whiteley’s glass of port, and the Praetor was now snoozing peacefully, his head resting on the window, occasionally mumbling in his sleep.

Alex had that strange stillness to her, somewhere between the snake about to strike and the rabbit quivering before it. Alban Reed had said something to upset her, maybe even scared her, and the demon inside him wanted nothing more than to punish the Lethe president for it. Darlington had a gift for doling out misery. He’d learned that in hell. But he’d not yet completely relinquished reason, and he wasn’t going to torture a man for an unnamed and possibly uncommitted crime, no matter how tempting violence had come to seem.

All of it would have to wait. For now their hope and attention were pinned to Pamela Dawes.