16. The Plumber in the Walls #2
“This is no longer circling,” I say.
Kelly’s pen stops.
Decker’s eyes harden.
“It’s contact,” I finish. “He’s inside the walls now.”
Water does not respect evidence.
It spreads, dilutes, and carries things everywhere an investigator would prefer it did not go.
Neither do wolves respect flood damage when their mate has been threatened.
Decker stands in the living room like a storm given shoulders, watching me photograph the waxed packet.
“You are taking pictures,” he says.
“Yes.”
“The packet is right there.”
“Yes.”
“You should pick it up.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I am done documenting it.”
His jaw flexes. “It is evidence, not a portrait subject.”
Kelly, crouched near the doorway with her phone angled toward the spreading water, says, “Ridgeclaw, we don’t know what’s in the packet. It could be poisonous. We have to be careful.”
Tala’s mouth almost curves. “She has a point.”
“I dislike all of this,” Decker says.
“That has been noted by the committee,” Kelly says.
I finish photographing the packet, then use gloves and forceps to lift it into an evidence sleeve. The residue inside is pale green-gray, finely ground, with the faintest herbal sweetness beneath the water damage.
“Do not touch any water,” I tell Tala.
We all look down. We are literally standing in it.
If there is poison in it, we can only pray it is too diluted to matter.
Still, we all bolt for the front door.
I quickly call a legitimate plumber from the emergency municipal list, verifying the company, technician, vehicle plate, and arrival estimate myself.
“It is. Send your best technician to Tala Sterling’s address. No substitutions. No freelance overflow help.”
“I do not use overflow contractors. I use my nephew, my daughter, and a guy named Sam who complains about knees and arrives with snacks.”
“Send Sam.”
“Sam will enjoy being chosen by law enforcement I am sure.”
“Tell him to forget the snacks, but bring his gumboots,” I advise.
“Understood.”
I hang up and look at Kelly. “Three calls.”
She is already writing. “Harborlight, Bayberry, Sterling.”
“And see if you can get Mercer to identify what’s in the bag so we know what we’re dealing with.”
I hand her the evidence bag, continuing my update. “Owner confirms no overflow technicians.”
“So someone outside of the plumbing company is inserting fake freelancers into real emergencies.”
“Or creating the emergencies and the business magnets.”
From the front porch, Decker growls.
Not loudly. Enough.
Tala touches his arm again. “Let them work.”
“I am letting them work.”
“You are vibrating.”
“Grrrrrr.”
The legitimate plumber, Sam, shows up in water protection boots. He confirms his name, the company, plate number and I.D. Decker checks his scent with the subtlety of a wolf considering whether municipal licensing is edible.
Sam looks between the three of us and slowly lifts both hands. “I fix pipes. I do not commit whatever this mood is.”
He waits for some sort of explanation. None is forthcoming.
Sam peers past us toward the kitchen. “Is anyone going to tell me why there’s police tape near a sink?”
“No,” I say.
“Excellent. Love a workplace with mystery.”
He gets to work under supervision, muttering about cheap fittings, intentional pressure stress, and “whoever touched this last should be banned from tools.”
The house settles into controlled chaos. New piping is carried in as Sam trudges through the water. Tala returns with buckets. She and Decker begin hauling water out to the side yard. Fans arrive from Decker’s garage. Tala moves soaked towels with protective gloves and grim precision.
Decker follows her too closely until she turns, presses both hands to his chest, and says, “If you hover any harder, I will not be issuing you a permit.”
He steps back one inch.
Progress, by wolf standards.
I should be focused. I am focused. Mostly.
But every few minutes, my hand drifts toward my phone.
Fate should know.
Not everything. Not if walls listen. Not if direct words feed old hungers. But she should know the pattern has reached Tala and Decker. She should know her protection spell may have mattered.
I do not call.
The not-calling becomes a shape in my chest.
Heavy.
The rest of me wants Fate beside me, looking at the same facts from an impossible angle and saying something infuriatingly useful while pretending she is fine.
That realization irritates me.
I am not dependent on Fate D’Amour. I have solved murders before her. But this case is not behaving like a case. It behaves like a story told wrong on purpose. Fate understands stories. Threads. Patterns that do not appear in reports. Emotional architecture. The shape of secrets.
And right now, she is somewhere not here because we have both turned protection into distance.
“Detective?” Tala stands in the doorway, watching me with too much understanding. “Are you alright?” she asks.
“I should be asking you that.”
Her brows lift. She almost smiles. “You should call her.”
My spine stills. “This is not about Fate.”
“Of course not.”
“You do not know what this is.”
“I know you’ve looked at your phone seven times, and each time you don’t touch it, the air gets worse.” Her gaze softens. “I also know what it feels like when someone tries to protect you by deciding alone.”
Behind her, Decker appears like he has been summoned by the concept of male failure. “Did I hear my name?”
I look at him. “You would know.”
“Yes,” he says without shame.
That is inconveniently mature.
I turn away before either of them can become more helpful.
In the kitchen, Sam crawls out from under the sink. “Whoever rigged this used the existing failure point. Smart. Mean. Very rude to flooring.”
Kelly reappears.
She hands me a report.
“Good news I hope.”
“She said it’s wolfsbane?”
Decker and Tala look up when they hear.
“It’s a supernatural potion that can harm wolves, but the report says there was not enough released to harm anyone, particularly if diluted.”
I look around at the kitchen floor.
“Looks like we’re safe.”
“She said there was something else in there, same as with Romeo and Juliet. It might have acted as the trigger. She’s going to see if she can’t figure out what that is.”
“She won’t,” I say.
Kelly looks up. Tala and Decker stop scooping water.
I check to see if Sam is in earshot.
“It’s a magical element.”
Of that much I am sure.
I don’t dare say a curse…because we never know who’s listening.
Luckily, everyone in the room has the good sense to not ask any more questions.
Until the knock on the front door.
It’s the police sketch artist.
He sets up on the porch while Tala and Decker empty their buckets and remove their rubber gloves.
He is able to work fast. Tala is precise. Decker is predatory. Between them, they build a face from fragments.
“Jaw narrower,” Tala says.
“Eyes closer together,” Decker adds.
“Not cruel,” Tala says after a pause. “That’s important. He didn’t look cruel. He looked…empty.”
“Dead inside,” Decker says.
Tala gives him a look. “Less poetic. More tired.”
Decker grunts.
Kelly takes a call in the hall, then returns with her face tight.
“The plumbing owner sent records,” she says. “His office received email authorization for all three jobs. Vendor code, client name, address, urgency level. But the metadata traces to a routing service. Monroe says it was masked.”
“Organized access,” I say.
Not coincidence.
Not one desperate man improvising.
Someone understands service systems, emergency protocols, and the way people open doors faster when water is spreading across their floors.
“Detective Wolfe?” the sketch artist says.
She turns the pad toward me.
The room inhales. Not magically. Worse. Recognizably.
The face on the page is male, late forties or early fifties.
Narrow jaw. Long nose. Patchy gray in the beard.
One ear slightly damaged. Eyes too calm, as Decker said.
Empty, as Tala corrected. And around his neck, shaded in careful pencil, hangs a chain.
Old silver. Heavy links. Some kind of a knot inside a ring.
Kelly steps closer.
I hear her breathing change before I look at her.
She has seen the same thing I did. Of course she has.
Because this man is not Niall Fraser.