Chapter 15 #3
Hallie didn’t have time to form any impressions of the room other than it was even more luxurious than the entryway, her attention on Girard and Zurine.
The forger was standing next to a heavy desk, using one hand to stuff various items into a larger leather bag, gun held in the other hand.
She must have heard or sensed Girard’s movement, despite the zauber’s magic, as she looked up, eyes wide, and brought the gun up, aimed squarely at Girard’s chest.
She got one shot off, but her aim was bad and the bullet whizzed past Girard and thudded into the wall not far from Hallie. Then the forger threw something at Girard and turned to run.
Girard stopped dead in his tracks, as if frozen in time and space. The last Hallie saw of Zurine was the woman slipping out of the nearest window, leather bag slung over her shoulder.
Hallie skidded to a halt beside Girard and stared at him. He was coated in what looked like a fine mist, and Hallie could sense magic in the air. She was getting better at recognising it, thanks to the periodic lessons with Emmet and her own increasing use of magic.
“Hold still a moment,” she told Girard, eyes on the mist. To her relief, the magic didn’t seem to be doing anything apart from holding him still.
He made a low sound of frustration. “Sorry. Poor choice of words. I mean, don’t try to fight it.
It’s some kind of resistance spell, which the zauber or I should be able to reverse.
” She sent a silent query to the zauber.
The artefact preened a little again and sent a sliver of its own power out into the air, dissolving the mist. “There. Can you move now?”
“Yes,” Girard said. His eyes were snapping with temper, but it wasn’t directed at Hallie. “I should have expected she’d have other defences.”
“I’m not sure how,” Hallie said, following him as he strode towards the window. “Magic isn’t all that common, and I’d never seen a spell like that before.”
Girard was only half listening. He stuck his head and torso out of the open window and made a low noise of disgust. “I can’t see her anywhere.
And I can’t get a fix on her. Still don’t have a good enough feel to track her.
” He came back into the room and looked around, then turned to Hallie. “Any ideas?”
“She was prepared to run. And we interrupted her, so she might have left something useful on the desk. But I doubt she’ll have left much else behind.
She’ll have at least a couple of other places across the city to go and hide,” Hallie said, thinking as she spoke.
“We might get somewhere by checking her family background and property records. No, she won’t have a hideout in her own name, but possibly in the name of a family member, or unclaimed property. ”
She paused, taking a careful look around the room.
It was a large space, making the enormous desk Zurine had been standing beside look small.
It had the same opulent feel as the entryway, with the same thick, richly patterned carpet and crimson walls.
The deep colours could have felt oppressive, but instead made the space feel inviting and restful.
Besides the desk, there was a sitting area with an array of different types of seating, and a large painting over a fireplace that looked like it might be an original, to Hallie’s untrained eye.
“She likes the finer things in life. If she does have a hideout, I’m guessing that she’ll have some nice things stashed away, so we’ll know it when we find it.
That doesn’t help much in actually finding it, I know.
There are a few areas of low city with a poor population that don’t ask too many questions.
” Hallie herself had a basement room in one such building, where she’d hidden Rosalia when they had both been suspected of killing Rosalia’s keeper.
“Or she might do something quite different and head to midtown.”
“We need more people,” Girard said. But he hesitated before pulling out his phone.
“I’d like to check the rest of this building, too,” Hallie said, while Girard stared at his phone screen. She understood his hesitation. The director and the rest of the investigators were working flat-out on the threats to the Conclave. The forger might be a distraction from that.
Girard looked up from the phone, interest sharpening his eyes. “Why?”
“Look around. This feels like a private retreat. Yes, I am sure she had some work items here, in the desk, but I don’t see this as a place where she would have actually created false papers, or met clients.
So I think she might have an office space somewhere else.
Not just for shop business, but for her other business as well. ”
“Good thinking. Right. Let me get the property searches started,” Girard said, and dialled a preset number on his phone.
Hallie moved across to the desk while he spoke to the director, remembering to put on gloves before she began investigating the giant piece of furniture.
It had the weight and feel of something she’d expect to find in a hochlen household, reinforcing her assessment that Zurine Halinburn liked the finer things in life.
Even though they’d taken the forger by surprise, and she’d been loading up her bag when Hallie and Girard had found her, Zurine had left nothing of great interest behind.
There was a shallow drawer of expensive pens and bottles of ink, all nestling in velvet inserts.
Another drawer held writing paper and envelopes that, even through her gloves, Hallie could tell were of premium quality.
The kind of luxury that few people could afford.
The rest of the drawers were filled with the sorts of odds and ends that Hallie imagined might be found in any household with a decent income.
It reminded her of a sideboard in her mother’s house which had held a collection of rarely used but still useful items. Wrapping paper and blank gift cards.
Napkins and table mats - the good sort that would be used for dinner parties.
Scented candles, all unused. And a miscellany of other odds and ends.
All unremarkable, apart from the price point which was several degrees higher than anything that had been found in Wilona Talbot’s house.
The only thing of note in Zurine’s desk was the empty drawers. One was large enough to have held the leather bag last seen across Zurine’s shoulder. The others looked as if they might have held papers, but not even a paperclip was left.
“She cleaned out very well,” Hallie commented, pulling off her gloves and turning to meet Girard as he finished his call. “There’s nothing here I can see that will help us.”
“Peredur is going to get a couple of people to start looking at family and property records. He’s also sending Jasper and Dudon to help us once they’ve completed their task. He said to tell you that the sweet wrapper turned out to be a very good lead.”
“I’m glad,” Hallie said.
“I don’t want to wait for them before we get started on the building search. See if we can find Miss Halinburn’s office.”
“Let’s have a quick look around her home before we go. It might help give a better sense of her,” Hallie suggested.
Looking around the forger’s apartment took very little time.
Apart from the large main room, there was a kitchen full of high-end items such as a coffee machine that looked like the grown-up cousin of the one in Hallie’s new kitchen, a bathroom and a large bedroom with an extensive, walk-in, wardrobe full of the sorts of clothes that would have looked at home in the shop on the ground floor.
Zurine had clearly believed in advertising the goods she sold.
Running her hand along the body of a velvety smooth cardigan, to check if there might be anything hidden in the pockets, Hallie cast her eyes back along the row of clothes.
“She dresses for her day job,” she said.
“All of these clothes could be on display in the shop below. It’s a uniform of sorts.
I’m sure she likes the clothes, but they don’t feel really personal.
” Hallie thought of her own wardrobe, which contained a few items that were old and threadbare but which she couldn’t bear to part with.
There was nothing like that in Zurine’s collection.
“There’s not much here to tell us who she really is.
Which makes me wonder if she’s assumed her name as well. ”
“Oh?” Girard prompted. He was standing in the doorway of the wardrobe, as if a little uneasy about entering the woman’s private space.
“I mean, she makes false identities. So, she’d have the skills to create one for herself.
And she lives here alone. There’s not a single trace of anyone else.
And there are no photographs. Not of Zurine, or any friends or family members.
I didn’t find an address book in her desk.
I mean, she might keep one on her phone, but she had letter paper and envelopes, which says a paper address book to me. ”
“So, Zurine Halinburn might not be her real name. That might explain why I’m not getting a fix on her. The false identity doesn’t fit.”
“That would be my guess,” Hallie said, leaving the wardrobe and moving to stand in front of Girard.
“I’m also going to guess that she won’t have wanted to reinvent herself too much or too many times.
From what I could gather, this shop has been here for a decade, perhaps more.
So her name change, if she did one, is at least ten years old. ”
“An identity she’s held for that length of time would be pretty solid,” Girard said, as if he was thinking aloud, “but she might have made a mistake or two when she set it up or in her early days. So we need to look back to the start, see if we can trace when she first appeared and if anyone else disappeared at the same time.”
Hallie wrinkled her nose. Research was not her favourite thing to do.
Old records tended to be incomplete. Although the city’s ID database went back decades, a lot of low city paperwork a decade or more older tended to be on paper.
The newer records would be digital, and much easier to look into, but someone was going to have to go to the city’s administration offices and do a hand search.
“I’m sure Jasper and Dudon will find it fascinating, if we can’t find her from what we turn up in her office,” Girard said, a hint of laughter in his voice. She didn’t think she’d discussed her dislike of paperwork with him before now, but he apparently knew her well enough to read her face.
“Good plan,” Hallie approved.
In perfect harmony, they left Zurine’s apartment and headed back down the stairs to the stockroom behind the shop, ready to keep searching for the forger.