Chapter 32
SARAH
What do I do with everything I discovered yesterday? Charles Okoye sitting down to dinner with Sandra Ortiz. Is that sinister, or simply him working through unofficial channels to protect our community’s interests? I’ve no way of knowing.
What of the fact that Ortiz was involved in Theodorou’s decision to detain Maggie? That I can at least pass on to the person who asked me to find out more. I call Chester.
‘I gotta take this to Lieutenant Lamarr,’ he says when we meet in the parking lot of a drive-thru outside Bridgeport. ‘Maggie’s boss.’
Chester looks as clammy as his iced-coffee cup.
I remember Maggie telling me over dinner, more than a little tipsy, about her tough superior Remy Lamarr.
His abs are hard as rock, she’d snorted, and his balls are even harder.
But he’s a good guy, Sarah. A plays-by-the-rules cop, but fair when he can be, and never harsh for no reason.
‘I’ll come too,’ I say. ‘Moral support, and to give him an idea of what I sensed and how confident in that I can be.’
It feels like the right idea, until I find myself approaching the Hartford Police headquarters where Harper and I were brought for registration.
The last day of Pierre’s life. My hands shake as I turn in the opposite direction from the prefab where they’re still busily taking witches’ blood and our fingerprints and our dignity.
Killing the engine, I sit there, head bowed, weeping silently.
After a while I’m aware of Chester hovering by the door.
I wind down the window and accept the handkerchief he passes me.
It smells faintly of lavender and a small part of my brain wonders if his grandma washes and irons them for him, even as the larger part is thinking that if Lachlan was here, he’d probably burn that prefab to the ground. Am I a coward for not doing the same?
When I’m all cried out and tidied up, I let Chester lead me through the maze of the office building.
It’s a discombobulating place and I’m assailed by odours of warm plastic flooring, sweating bodies, stale air-con, toasted sandwiches, strong aftershave, laundered gym kit, canteen cooking – and under it all, tepid disinfectant.
From toilets, or cells, some crude psychological urge that equates cleanliness with righteousness and feigns both when it can’t achieve either.
The din is unbearable. Chatter, laughter, argument.
Ringing phones, slamming doors. The unmistakable roar of someone high on drugs.
Another person somewhere, very quietly, sobbing. I quicken my pace.
At last, several floors up, we turn into a cooler, calmer corridor. Chester anxiously checks the nameplates of each door as we pass, then pauses before one to breathe deeply and set back his shoulders.
‘I told her she could have gotten herself fucking killed going to meet Luka Ortiz,’ Lamarr barks, his cussing at odds with his startlingly upright posture and the breath-mint freshness of his white shirt.
‘Theodorou rang me right after he detained her and explained what he’d done.
I can’t say I was happy, but you know Maggie.
Can’t help interfering when she sees something she doesn’t think is right.
And you’ – he’s remembered my existence and points a warning finger – ‘are not to breathe a word of any conversation in here, do you understand me? Your uninvited presence on police premises is probably some kind of witchcrime, if I search the statute book hard enough. In fact, Greenstreet, why is she here?’
‘Because Sandra Ortiz influenced Theodorou to detain Detective Knight,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Lamarr throws himself back in his chair. ‘Greenstreet, I’ll have words with Theodorou because surely Mags has learned her lesson by now. But do not bring witch conspiracy-theorists into my office please and thank you. Good day.’
‘That’s not—’ Chester begins. But I step forward.
‘I’m not wrong. Ortiz talks a lot about law and order, but I can tell you, she’ll use the law to order the world how she wants it.’
‘Miss Fenn,’ Lamarr says, crisply. ‘I’m sorry if your experiences have made you paranoid.
That’s understandable. But Ortiz is so concerned to act within the law she’s writing new ones to keep us busy.
And can I suggest that for my detective’s own good, you don’t get involved in her life or choices.
Maggie’s reputation as a credible, impartial witness is threatened as it is by the fact Luka Ortiz went on the run on her watch. ’
‘He’d already run,’ Chester points out. ‘He was a hundred kilometers from home and had removed his electronic tag by the time we met him.’
‘The only thing Maggie could do to stop tongues wagging that she aided his escape – as some say she aided your and your daughter’s escape from Sanctuary, Miss Fenn – would be to bring him back in, because Theodorou himself has had no luck.
Yeah.’ A light comes into Remy Lamarr’s eyes.
He looks at me with new-kindled interest. ‘To bring him back in …’