Chapter 5 #7
“Shoulda brought a mask,” Grady muttered. He lifted his gun cautiously as they checked for intruders. Nothing in the open living area or the tiny bathroom. The only other door in the room was closed and had to lead to the bedroom.
“If it's a ghost,” Quinn said as he pulled out some latex gloves and slipped them on, “I don't think a gun is going to be very effective.”
“Better than nothing?” Grady said with a shrug as he ventured further into the small one-bedroom apartment.
Quinn paused, tilting his head. “Do you hear that?”
Grady narrowed his eyes as he listened. “It’s coming from the bedroom.”
“It sounds like—” Quinn’s heart dropped as he noticed the dog bowls next to the kitchen counter.
“Whimpering,” Grady finished.
Quinn braced himself in case the dog came at him with teeth as he opened the bedroom door slowly.
Nothing.
He peered into the room and couldn’t see anything. The whimpering was coming from under the bed.
“Is that a fucking beagle?” Grady breathed out.
Quinn ran a hand down his beard and crouched, peering under the bed where the dog was cowering. The floppy ears were a dead giveaway.
“I bet it hasn’t eaten since Delgrade was killed,” Grady said. “I’m arresting Stanton on our way out.”
“For what?” Quinn murmured. He held out a hand and made soothing noises, trying to coax it out.
“For negligence? Weird fucking noises, my ass. He can’t recognise a dog bark? Are you kidding me?”
“You’re scaring her—him—it—just go and search another room, okay?”
“Whatever,” Grady growled. He stomped away, causing the beagle to flinch.
It took a good ten minutes before it finally came out and sniffed Quinn’s hand before giving it a lick.
“You hungry, buddy?” Quinn asked. He ran a hand down its head and took hold of the collar, flicking the small medallion hanging off it.
“Persephone.” Well, that was a mouthful.
“Come on, let’s see if your dad has some food in the cupboard for you. ”
Quinn stood, taking the dog with him. She yapped and tried to lick his face. He arched his neck away. “No licking. I think it’s important we establish rules right now.”
It looked like Grady had been a step ahead of him because he’d filled up the dog bowls with food and water and left them on the bench for Quinn.
Quinn placed them on the floor with the dog and left her there to quench her thirst and feed her hunger. Grady was in the bathroom, looking through the medicine cabinet.
“Anything interesting?”
“He had a lot of allergies,” Grady replied. “But nothing that tells us anything. There’s like twelve different kinds of hay-fever medicine in here.”
“Makes you wonder how he had a dog.”
“Beagles have short hair, I guess? I dunno. Mal is allergic, so we’ve never had one.”
“He’s allergic to dogs?” Quinn crouched and pushed Grady’s hip out of the way so he could check under the sink.
“Yeah. And cats. Cats are worse.”
Nothing of interest. Cleaning supplies, dog shampoo.
“Poor guy,” Quinn murmured.
The kitchen wasn’t any more interesting.
Enough Chinese leftovers in the fridge to start a restaurant, a TV older than Quinn’s grandmother, and fruit that was so rotted it would have started rotting well before Delgrade had been killed.
The dog supplies, however, were top-notch, and everything that belonged to the dog looked expensive and well looked after.
It was easy to see where Delgrade put any money he had.
There was a single piece of paper stuck to the fridge with a beagle magnet; at first it looked like a generic shopping list. Quinn pulled it off and scanned it, his brows furrowing.
“What is it?” Grady asked.
“Not your normal grocery shopping,” Quinn replied. He handed it over and did a quick check of the cupboards, though he wasn’t expecting to find anything.
“Damn, that’s some list. I thought Gid and Ange said he wasn’t dealing anymore?”
“That list looks like he’s making, not dealing. But there are no signs of a lab in this tiny apartment, and Angela rarely gets her facts wrong.”
“So what the fuck is going on, then?” Grady asked, scowling.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Persephone happily followed Quinn into the bedroom and immediately tried to jump up onto the bed with her short little legs. Quinn quickly moved the sheets and checked under them and in the pillows before he helped her jump up onto it.
“Careful of the dog shit,” Grady said ruefully as he stepped over the aforementioned droppings. “She must have accidentally closed the bedroom door at some point and then couldn’t get out.”
That was plausible.
“Oh, fuck me,” Grady burst out.
Quinn turned abruptly, one hand on his gun as he searched the small room for whatever had startled Grady. When he saw, he visibly flinched, unable to hold back his visceral response to the familiar dolls that were lined up on the shelf beside the bed. Jesus Christ.
“I never thought I’d see these fucking monstrosities again,” Grady grumbled. He tentatively picked one up as though he were waiting for it to come to life and stab him with a kitchen knife. Quinn couldn’t blame him; he wasn’t sure he wanted to touch one.
“Yeah,” Quinn said, agreeing. They weren’t the kinds of images that would ever leave a person.
They were horrific, with scars sliced across their faces, bulging eyes, ratty clothes, and bleeding fingers.
Nightmares come to life. Someone had put a lot of care into making them, but that didn’t make them any less hideous.
It almost made them worse, the realistic style choices jarring.
His heart froze as the implication set in. “Grady, these were evidence in a murder investigation for a police informant.”
Grady turned the one he held over in his hand, pressing hard with his thumb. “Can’t be a coincidence.”
“No.” Everyone on the case had bonded over the horrific images of the dolls and drank because of them later but hadn’t thought anything else of them.
The informant had been drugged and then thrown out a tenth-storey window.
The case itself had been pretty cut-and-dried, though they’d never found a culprit.
Another one for the cold-case storage. One of too many, really.
Quinn pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket and handed it over so that Grady could put the dolls inside. They’d need to take the dolls back, inspect them further. It was a connection they didn’t even know had existed.
“Think the same person killed Delgrade?” Quinn asked.
“Possible. If this is a serial killer, I’m going to scream.”
“It’s only two—”
“That we know of.”
“That we know of, and we need a better pattern than that they were both police informants. How would they have even known?”
“Maybe they work for the same organisation?”
That was possible too. Quinn would need to pull out the case files again, go over them. It had been over a year since they’d worked the case, and there had been hundreds since.
“What do we do with the dog?” Grady asked.
Persephone’s ears perked up from where she’d been rubbing her face all over the sheets.
She pushed her side against Quinn’s hips and almost toppled off the bed.
Quinn gently held her up and nudged her back into the middle of the bed.
She pushed against his hand, and he scratched her behind the ear.
“We’ll need to see if Delgrade had any next of kin to leave her with. Otherwise, the RSPCA, I guess.”
“Until then?”
Quinn shrugged. Persephone looked up at him with her giant eyes. “Give her to Stanton?”
“The asshole that would have heard her howling and didn’t do anything? Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“If you’re that worried, you take her.”
“She likes you better. Besides, Mal is allergic, remember?”
Quinn didn’t have a reasonable argument for any of that. “Fine. You’re going shopping with me.”
“Why don’t you just grab her stuff here?”
“I can’t just take things from the apartment,” Quinn said. He picked up Persephone and tried to find a comfortable spot where she stopped wriggling. “I shouldn’t even be taking the dog.”
“What are you supposed to do? Leave her here?”
Quinn could not believe they had gone to a dead guy’s apartment to look around, and he’d come out with a dog. Between that and the three men that were occupying his thoughts, this week was turning into one of the weirdest he’d ever experienced.