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“I don’t suppose you have any idea who might be able to help us ID this shit?” I asked Mays.
“Not unless you know a pharmaceutical chemist.”
“You don’t, I take it?”
He shook his head.
“Damn.”
* * *
Doc camethrough for me a day later with a pharmaceutical chemist working at his old university, so I’d taken Taavi down there, driving out past the increasingly large estates in the city’s West End before turning onto the perfectly manicured campus with its matching buildings. I went to school on a campus that had so little design involved that one of our classroom buildings had been builtbackwards, so I found this university’s whole red-brick aesthetic fascinating. I hadn’t ever had to come to campus before—fortunately, there aren’t a lot of murders on college campuses—so this was a new experience for me. I didn’t even know movie-campuses like this existed in real life.
I got Taavi out of the car, clipped on his leash with an apology, and led him around to the main entrance of the science center, looking for whatever the fuck a ‘pod C’ was once we got into the building. After walking in circles for a bit, I finally sorted it out, and knocked on the doorframe of a smallish office. The woman inside, a short, petite little thing with huge glasses, brown skin, and black hair that stuck out from her ponytail holder, looked up. I saw her glance at a mask sitting on her desk, but then she must have decided that a shifter and an elf weren’t a transmission risk—we weren’t—and she ignored it.
“Dr. Keller?” I’d emailed her ahead of time, then called to see if she thought this was even remotely worth trying.
“Detective Hart, I presume.” She stood and crossed the office, and I shook the hand she extended. Then she crouched down. “And you must be Taavi.”
He chuffed, his tail slapping against my calf.
“Can I pet you, or is that rude?” she asked.
He chuffed again, then pushed his head into her hand, drawing a laugh.
“Okay, then.”
Taavi petted, she stood. “You said you had a sample?” I held out the little cooler Mays had given me with two vials of Taavi’s blood, since Dr. Keller had not been terribly keen on drawing it herself. Specifically, she’d informed me that she had no medical training and thought she was just as likely to accidentally miss or stab him to death as she was to draw blood.
I’d immediately called Mays, who happily agreed to take some new samples for me that morning. If nothing else, it would give us a comparison point—although I wanted more than that.
“How long will this take?” I asked her.
“That depends on how tricky this chemical compound is.” She shrugged. “A day or two at most. The real question is how long it’ll take me to figure out how to neutralize it.”
Nothing is ever fucking simple.
11
I gota text from Dr. Keller halfway through a brutal Wednesday of trying to track down any other possible witnesses to the Schmidt stabbing. She told me she had news and that I could call her anytime before ten that night. Thank fucking God, because there was no way I was going to get even a minute to myself during the day with the way things were going.
Taavi had actively retreatedundermy desk, where my feet would have gone if I’d had a chance to actually sit at my desk at any point, and every time I walked or scooted or whatever past it, looked out at me with wide, nervous eyes.
I would much rather have been under the desk with him than chasing down phone calls, interviewing witnesses, begging Ward to come in and do a victim interview—which he did sometime around three—and working with a small pack of rookies skimming through social media posts about the protest.
I think I’d talked to easily two hundred people by the time seven o’clock rolled around and I looked up from filing yet another witness report to find that the crowd of people had finally thinned out. And I didn’t have anything more substantial than when I started.
Dan Maza put a hand on my shoulder, his expression tired over the top of his brown mask. “Get the fuck out of here, Hart. Before someone finds something else for you to do.”
I nodded once and didn’t make him say it twice.
I collected Taavi from under my desk and headed out, breathing a huge sigh of relief when we made it to my car without anybody stopping me to ask for anything.
Taavi whined from the passenger seat.
I looked over at him. “Did you need something?”
A soft growl.
