Chapter 6
Michael reached for her executive pen holder, and I held my breath. She bypassed her Montblanc, so she didn’t consider this meeting super serious, but she also skipped over the ballpoint, which would have indicated (to me) that this conversation wasn’t worth her time. She selected a rollerball pen that wasn’t super expensive yet wasn’t exactly cheap either. It was a solid pen designed for when you had work to really tackle.
That wasn’t reassuring.
“Ms. Nichols was killed with a gun, not magic,” Michael said.
“Eishei Kodesh can use guns too,” Keira retorted.
We could; we just didn’t tend to. When my people flexed, they did so with magic.
“That lent itself to a non-magic perp,” my mother continued, “and put the file in your purview. I didn’t ‘dump anything’ as you so melodramatically put it.”
The general public weren’t told about demons so as not to incite mass panic, but Trad cops were briefed. Maccabees couldn’t force them to believe in the existence of those supernatural beings, since unlike vampires, most people went their entire lives without seeing a demon, however those officers were out there protecting humanity, and for about the last hundred years or so, we’d shared knowledge of that evil with them.
That said, there was a big difference between telling them that and them ever concluding that the suspect in a crime with no evidence of magic was a shedim. Michael had expected Trad officers to pronounce Chandra’s death a cold case and be buried in some basement filing cabinet.
So much for that. At least Detective Olivier Desmond hadn’t been one of the Trad officers investigating. I would have felt like an utter shit facing my friend, especially now that he was often over at my place visiting his new girlfriend, Sachie.
“This was never a workplace burglary gone wrong,” Keira said. “Employment agencies don’t have cash or anything valuable on their premises, and Nichols was Eishei Kodesh, yet you didn’t fight jurisdiction at all.”
“I no longer waste my time when non-magical weapons are involved.” Michael grabbed a legal pad. “You have a high solve rate.”
Keira crossed her arms. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass, Mickey.”
I choke-coughed. Mickey? Director Michael Hannah Fleischer had been called many things, but never anything as pedestrian as a nickname.
My mother glared at her…nope, not enough facts to supply an object of this sentence.
“What turned your suspicions to the magic community?” I interjected, my stomach aching.
I’d used the magic cocktail in my ring to destroy the shedim who’d killed Chandra. Little did I know at the time that all I’d done was send him into a demon lock prison.
I clenched my hands into fists.
Maccabees didn’t have the locations of these locks, so it wasn’t as if we could use our rings to trap shedim and then hoard their prison cells until we had a way to destroy them. Nor could we differentiate the lock prisons from regular love locks.
We weren’t sitting around with our thumbs up our asses though. The Authority stationed operatives around the globe to monitor places with the highest concentration of love locks. While we didn’t want to give the demons a heads-up that we were onto them, at the slightest sign these prisons were being moved, or there was any unusual activity, we’d swoop in and take them.
It was the best we could do right now.
I unclenched my fists.
“We decoded an encrypted file on Chandra’s laptop,” Keira said. “Partially decoded. We got one name off it, then malware kicked in, corrupting the whole computer. Jasmine Bakshi.”
I shivered, hearing that particular name coming out of a Trad cop’s mouth, and wished for an umbrella for the shit about to rain down on me.
Michael quickly typed something in and peered at her monitor. “Ms. Bakshi had been arrested in a drug bust by the time of Ms. Nichols’s death. As I’m sure you’ve verified.”
Keira turned to me with an expression of mild curiosity. “Aviva, you worked that case.”
My stomach dropped into my toes. No wonder she let me stay.
“You didn’t find a single connection to Chandra Nichols while you were investigating the drug bust?”
“Sorry, no.” I kept my breathing steady and my expression pleasantly bland, but I was a knot of tension waiting for Keira to drop her intel that I’d interviewed Chandra about the Bakshi case.
Michael cleared her throat, turning the chief constable’s focus from me. “I’d never heard of Chandra Nichols or known anything about her until after her death.”
That was true—and even disturbing in its own way. The matchmaker had managed to conduct these heinous acts of freeing demons and hooking them up with criminals right under our noses.
Keira pulled a thumb drive out of her pocket and dropped it on Michael’s desk. “Consider this my official transfer of Chandra Nichols’s murder investigation to the Maccabees.”
Investigations did get switched between Trads and Eishei Kodesh when evidence warranted it. A muscle twitched in Michael’s jaw, but she nodded.
“There is one other thing,” the chief constable said, almost like an afterthought. “Roger Henderson.”
Michael arched an eyebrow. “Jared Casey’s head of security?”
The federal politician had pushed for anti–Eishei Kodesh legislation for some time. Casey’s alt-right party was fringe enough that he’d never had any real power, but after a recent bank robbery gone wrong in Toronto where a teller was killed, his ideas lit a spark under some people.
It didn’t matter that it was a knife, not magic, that ended the poor man’s life, the murderer was Eishei Kodesh. Once that whole “real humans don’t need magic” slogan went viral, Casey’s proposed legislation gained a groundswell of support.
Sentiment between the two communities had grown tense across the country, but Vancouver was Casey’s electoral district and it was especially ugly here. Both Maccabee and Trad cops had been called out on a regular basis to break up fights.
“Mr. Henderson isn’t Eishei Kodesh if he works for Casey,” I said.
“No, he’s Trad like his brother, Brian. Chandra’s employee,” Keira said.
“The receptionist,” I murmured.
The other two woman looked at me—Keira bemused and my mother in warning.
“It was reported her male receptionist was also killed,” I said. “I assume that’s Brian, but even if you suspect Roger went after Chandra and accidentally killed his own brother, that’s still a Trad problem.”
Keira crossed her legs, and even feeling anxious and slightly nauseous I couldn’t help staring at those fabulous shoes of hers. “Remember the artifact thefts from the Supernatural : Debunked exhibit a while back?” she said.
Considering I had one of the stolen items in my possession, you could say I remembered it. None of them possessed Eishei Kodesh magic, but Sire’s Spark was a shedim artifact allowing anyone with demon blood to find other things with demon magic, including half shedim. No one knew that and we were keeping it that way.
Michael and I both nodded.
“Roger Henderson runs a security company,” Keira said. “He was responsible for transporting the items from their original owners to the Trad gallery for the exhibit.”
“The theft happened at the gallery the night before the exhibit was set to open,” Michael said. “That means it was long after he’d delivered them and not on his watch. It also doesn’t tie him to Nichols beyond a family member who worked for her.”
“Unless he was Nichols’s inside man on the gallery theft?” Keira said.
My heart sank. Oh no. She looked like a dog with a bone.
“What if he helped steal artifacts for Nichols to sell to Eishei Kodesh on the black market? Jasmine Bakshi could have been a potential customer. After all, Sire’s Spark, which is still missing, was rumored to be the strongest of all the ones originally stolen.” Keira ticked items off her fingers as she spoke. “There’s also the question of why George Green, the Trad thief who stole them, was killed? And why has a known collector of supernatural artifacts gone missing and is presumed dead?”
I could answer all those questions. The collector killed George Green, mistaking him for a man on my informant Rukhsana Gill’s crew with the same name. This collector then attacked her, looking for the artifacts. Jordy said Rukhsana “dealt with” the collector, so knowing Rukhsana, she murdered the dude, but she had nothing to do with Chandra’s death or the thefts.
My mother, meantime, stole the artifacts from the fence they’d been taken to and made an anonymous tip to the Trad cops about where to find all of them except the Sire’s Spark crystal, which she’d locked in her safe.
I then made a dummy copy and switched out the real one for mine.
“You always did have such a powerful imagination,” Michael said.
Except that truth was much stranger than fiction.
Keira furrowed her brow. “If it wasn’t that, then why did Chandra have Jasmine’s name in an encrypted file? The alternative is that the Maccabees missed Nichols’s role in illegal drug production. Aviva? Could that be possible?”
“I didn’t miss anything,” I said evenly, cursing her out in my head.
“Do you have any evidence tying Chandra Nichols to that theft?” Michael said. “Or Roger to Chandra?”
“Phone records with multiple calls over the past year between Chandra and Roger,” Keira said. “It’s circumstantial, I know.”
Michael danced her pen over her knuckles. “It’s barely even that.”
Unless he was transporting the released demon prisoners to their new, equally jail-like working conditions for shady Eishei Kodesh, like with Bratwurst Demon and Jasmine Bakshi.
Keira’s instincts were sound, but Michael was also correct that this was super circumstantial.
“What did Mr. Henderson say?” I asked.
“We haven’t asked him yet. One of my detectives was supposed to question him tonight, but…” The chief constable flashed an innocent smile. “It’s a Maccabee case now.”
I frowned. “Tonight is Jared Casey’s big fundraiser.”
There was an Eishei Kodesh counterprotest scheduled nearby with operatives on duty to keep the peace.
Keira slapped a ticket on top of the thumb drive. “The fundraiser is the perfect time to question Henderson for a couple minutes, seeing as he’ll be distracted with a million little details. It’s unlikely that a man in his position would risk that for whatever got Nichols shot, but due diligence must be exercised.”
“Who’s spewing bullshit now, Kiki?” Michael practically growled.
Kiki? My eyes bugged out of my head.
Michael flicked the ticket back at Keira with the tip of her pen. “Casey is buddy-buddy with the mayor. How fortuitous for you that if we do find something to pin on Henderson and shit hits the fan, it’ll be the Maccabees and not the Trads in the thick of it. Since you’re up for reappointment.”
“I’m sacrificing the glory of solving the case for the greater needs of the city,” Keira said with equally terrifying amiability. She returned the ticket to the top of the thumb drive. “Besides, Mickey, we both know how much you love a good subterfuge.”
I white-knuckled my armrests.
Director Michael Hannah Fleischer had built her professional reputation on rooting out corruption and being scrupulously aboveboard. Okay, yes, she’d obfuscated a few things in the new very unchartered waters where we swam, but never at the expense of harming her beloved Eishei Kodesh community or Vancouver at large. She placed the well-being of the people above all else.
Ask me how I knew.
She was going to eviscerate the head of the Trad police force. I eyed the door.
Michael got a sly grin that made me blink. “Like with the Cameron case.”
Keira barked a laugh. “That wig.”
Michael cackled evilly. “The homemade catapult.”
“No! Fuck you. I’d repressed that.” Keira shuddered.
Tally up the new body count, people, because we were about to have another corpse on our hands in approximately five seconds when I died of curiosity.
I guess I shifted in my seat, or my “What the holy hell” wasn’t in my head, because the two women snapped back into their professional faces.
“Fatal gunshot or not, I truly believe it wasn’t a Trad who killed Chandra,” Keira said. “She deserves justice.”
She’d gotten vengeance when I killed her attacker.
Thought I’d killed her attacker.
Fine. Imprisoned him in a lock cell.
Did that count?
“She does,” Michael said, “and we’ll get it for her.”
There was another few moments of logistical conversation about the handover, then the chief constable wished us good luck and left.
“What’s really the plan?” I said when the door closed behind her.
Michael sat back in her chair, her fingers steepled. “I want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the demon who murdered Chandra was the one she worked with to break the wards on those locks and free the shedim prisoners, or one she worked against.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not all you want.”
“The Authority believes Chandra told us about the magic in our rings. They’ve been resisting my demands that we track down other matchmakers because it suited them to believe that she was killed by a Trad with a gun and all further matchmaking was finished.” She unfurled a cold smile. “Now Trads officers know that Chandra was up to something even if they don’t have the details. Her actions can’t be swept under the rug.”
“Thanks to the chief constable we have leave to find the other matchmakers without anyone on the Authority being able to kibosh it.” I almost gave a fist pump because this was a hell of a second case at my new promoted level.
Cherry purred in contentment that I was the best and only person to connect all the threads in record time.
“Exactly,” Michael said. “Did she have partners and were any of them culpable in her death?”
“What happens when I conclude she was killed by a demon? One who I sent to a prison lock believing I’d destroyed him?”
Michael smirked. “Who said you’d be on this case?”
I shot my hand into the air. “Operative Fleischer volunteering for lead Maccabee on this, Director.”
She made a tsking sound. “That’s where I went wrong. I should have trained you to call me Director instead of Mom. Your teen years would have been so much easier.”
“Or we’d be like Sachie, Ben, and Reina, reduced to potato salad bribes. And you don’t even cook.”
“I do, however, excel at takeout.”
I crossed my arms.
“Yes, Aviva, you can have this investigation.”
No kidding, since I was the only one with the complete backstory.
She winked at me. “To answer your question, if there were other matchmakers involved, they’ll be prosecuted. As for the shedim himself, it depends on who we’re dealing with.”
“What happens if I conclude that it was one of the shedim who owned the locks and belonged to the group who corrupted the magic in our rings way back when? They’ll get away with her death, won’t they?”
“For now.” Michael clicked her pen with a decisiveness more suited to starting the engine when an ax-wielding clown was chasing you. “But as soon as we’ve restored the magic cocktail to destroy shedim, the Authority will devote the lion’s share of our resources and operatives to finding every demon involved. However, if Chandra’s shedim partner murdered her, I’ll send the vamps in the Spook Squad after that demon.”
I looked around the director’s office with its soundproofed walls, and still lowered my voice. “If it ever gets out that we’ve known all along what happened to her…” I made a slashing line across my neck.
“You saved yourself from the shedim assassin,” Michael said firmly. “We didn’t tell the Authority at the time because there were too many other problems you had to overcome with Dmitri and his sycophants, yet we can’t retroactively admit to what happened. I want this wrapped up once and for all.” She wrote Chandra’s name on her legal pad and circled it. “Nichols’s murder isn’t the Trad cold case I’d intended? All right. We control the narrative now.”
I drummed my fingers on the armrest. “Chandra had nothing to do with the stolen debunked artifacts and I doubt Roger was involved with her death, but if he isn’t totally innocent of wrongdoing, maybe those phone records are enough to make him pass me up the food chain.” I made a big show of cracking my knuckles. “Leave it with me. I’ll break Henderson.”
“Absolutely not. This is just a friendly chat. To that end, meet Roger on your own, so we don’t start off with an escalation.” She passed me the thumb drive and fundraiser ticket. “Just remember, these people may not have magic, but they’re either fanatics or opportunists. This is enemy territory.”
I stood up, putting both items in my purse. “Don’t underestimate them. I know.”
“I meant stay safe.”
I almost dropped my bag. Michael’s open show of concern slid inside me with the warmth of stepping into a patch of sunshine on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Had I missed the other times the corners of her eyes tightened with worry or was this the first time she allowed herself to show it? Either way, it was…nice. “I will.”
“Then scram. I can feel Louis hyperventilating outside the door, poor guy. He breaks out in hives when I’m late for my appointments.”
I cracked my knuckles again. “I can take care of him too,” I said hopefully.
My mother shot me a mock stern look. “Goodbye, Aviva.”
I heaved a sigh. “You never let me have any fun.”