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“Can I call you Holly?” Greg suddenly asked, as I scraped up the last of the ranch dip onto a scrap of chip from the bottom of the bag. “Sorry, that was sudden, wasn’t it? Calling you Miss Caldwell all night just seems awkward. Like I’m back in school.”
“Holly’s fine,” I assured him.
“I was just wondering how you got into all this. Not this, meaning the stakeout, but—”
“The witch business?” I smiled a little. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a thing like that?”
“Something like that.”
I shrugged. “I was studying for a degree in chemistry when I discovered that I had kind of a gift—I could combine chemicals, and they didn’t exactly follow the normal rules of engagement that they did for other people. My professor finally said that I had an unusual talent and gave me the name of a counselor who could tell me something about it. It wasn’t that I started out to be one. It just happened.”
“Sounds like what I do,” Greg said, in the same quiet tone as before. “It just kind of happened.”
“So what got you into forensics?” I asked.
Oddly enough, he smiled a little, as if I’d said something funny. “Oh, I’ve always been interested in stuff like that,” he said. “You know, true crime. I read a lot of books, watched a lot of movies. Looked glamorous the way they show it on the screen. In real life, though, it’s boring. Lots of waiting around for results. Lots of painstaking tests. And not nearly as many pretty girls hanging around the crime scenes as you’d think.”
That was almost certainly true. Most detectives I’d ever worked with, male or female, were grim, tired, and not exactly model material. “Still. With all the glamorous forensics dramas on TV, I imagine it helps you out with meeting people.”
This time, he laughed outright, and it had a funny, tinfoil edge to it. “Oh yeah,” he said. “It helps. The problem is, they never hang around. I mean, I’m really just a glorified lab monkey. They’re looking for some kind of super secret agent with cool toys.” He shifted in his seat and turned his head to look at me. I waited for him to say something—anything—but he just stared for so long that I began to feel a little uncomfortable.
Then Greg said, “Hey, check the alley on your side.”
I whipped my head around so fast I nearly pulled a muscle. Beside the bodega was a standard industrial-type alley, wide enough to drive a garbage truck through, with room for big rusted Dumpsters. I caught sight of a shadow ducking between the containers. “Homeless, maybe?” I said. My throat had gone suddenly dry, and I took another pull from my water bottle to combat it. “Did you get a good look?”
“Not really. Could be a vagrant, a mugger … could be our killer checking out the area.” Greg reached down for the flashlight. I reached out and put my hand over his, and he quickly pulled back.
“I think we should wait,” I said. “Either way, it’s not safe going in there after him. Chances are it’s nobody we need to worry about, right?”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry if I freaked you out.”
“You didn’t,” I said, but it was a lie. I’d felt goose bumps shiver all over me, just for a moment, but now rational thought was coming back. The only real danger we were facing at the moment was a dire lack of snack food and a growing bladder problem. The bodega was open all night, and I’d seen a few people come and go; they’d probably let us use the restroom if it was an emergency. Greg had some kind of credentials as a law enforcement officer, anyway. Surely that counted toward bathroom privileges.
Greg seemed content to let the silence lie. He turned on the car radio to an oldies station, and for the rest of the long night, we found neutral, pleasant things to chat about while taking turns visiting the bodega’s narrow, not-terribly-sanity facilities.
* * *
We passed the night without incident. The sun came up, and the vacant lot we’d staked out still looked empty. No sign of a body.
Greg got out and walked the lot, just in case, but came back with a discouraged look on his face. “Nothing,” he said as he started the car. “He’s hit somewhere else, or he took the night off. Sorry, Holly, I guess this one’s a bust. Time for bed.”
I caught myself yawning. Even though I’d dozed a bit while Greg kept watch, I felt achy and light-he
aded from the lack of real sleep and unpleasantly buzzed from all the coffees. “I can’t sleep,” I mumbled, and yawned again, popping my jaw in the process. “Got to shower and go to work.”
“You’re kidding. You’ll be dead on your feet.”
“Aren’t you going in?”
“Not me,” Greg said. “I have the day off. If you’re smart, you’ll call in sick. C’mon, is the world really gonna stop turning if you don’t turn in some spreadsheet nobody really reads?”
I almost laughed; he was quoting me almost verbatim about my own day job. And he had a point, really. I was so exhausted that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t fall asleep on my keyboard, even if I could make it in to the office. Maybe calling in a sick day wasn’t a bad idea after all.
“Huh,” Greg said. “I guess your boyfriend’s home.”
I opened my eyes—when had I closed them?—and saw that I’d dropped off again during the ride; he’d pulled the sedan up in the driveway of my house, and Andy stood on the porch, arms folded. He looked tense and a little bit dangerous, and I realized that unlike his note to me, I’d totally forgotten to write a note for him. It had never occurred to me that I might not be back first.
“He doesn’t look happy,” Greg said.
