As his phone went off, he took it out, and as soon as he saw it was Butch, he answered. “I was just about to call you. We found Isobel’s . . .” He hesitated, unsure of how much Rochelle wanted to keep quiet. Plus God only knew where Marquist was in the house. “We found the friend who helped bury Isobel, the one Helania was looking for—”
“Syn didn’t do it.”
Boone took his phone away from his ear and stared at the thing.
Then he put it back into place. “What did you say?”
“He lied. Wrath could scent it.” The Brother laughed in a harsh rush. “The great Blind King doubles as one hell of a polygraph test.”
“Wait, this makes no sense. Helania saw him with Mai, with the female he killed.”
“He was with Mai. But he wasn’t the last person to be with her.”
“That’s not possible. Why would he lie?”
“Look, I’m not going to argue or debate why in the hell that fighter would cop to something he didn’t do because I can’t fathom his reasoning about anything at this point. He’s really fucked in the head, to be honest. But be that as it may, he did not kill either of those females or the human one who was found first at the club.”
Boone thought back to that alley, and the human male he’d castrated and tortured . . . that Syn had taken responsibility for.
Before he could bring all that up, Butch continued, “Bottom line, we’ve got no concrete evidence on him anyway. No bloody clothes. No meat hooks hiding under his bed, not that he has one.”
Boone could only shake his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Actually, it makes perfect sense when you remember what I told you about confirmation bias. I’ve been there—fuck it, I am there with this case. I just thought you’d want to know the updates, and Helania needs to be told, too. I think you should both come down here.”
Boone looked over his shoulder. “She’s here with me at my house. We’ve promised the friend that she could go check out some of Isobel’s stuff back at the apartment. But after that we can come in, and I want to bring the friend with us. There’s another angle to everything, but I can’t go into it where I am now.”
“Okay. Just call Fritz. He’s ready to go get you, even in this storm.” As Boone ended the call, he felt like throwing his phone at the wall.
What stopped him was the fact that the fucking killer was still out there somewhere and he might need the goddamn thing.
Stepping over the threshold of Marquist’s former quarters, he headed toward the moving boxes—
The lights went out, this time with no flicker warning. Disoriented in the dark, Boone bumped into a chair, then kicked into something low and heavy, the whatever-it-was toppling over and scattering whatever it held.
Just as he was fumbling with his phone to get the flashlight on, the electricity came back on and he looked down.
What he’d managed to bootlick was a shoe-shine kit, the wooden box on its side, the put-your-foot-here contours of the top popped open. Metal tins of polish and a stained chamois rag, as well as a vial of little sole nails, had spilled like blood and organs from a victim, the impact of his steel-toed shitkicker spreading them out in a fan.
Of course Marquist would leave the kit here. No more shoe polishing—
Boone frowned as something caught his eye. Lowering himself down, he got a closer look at the carpet. The tiny sole nails that had come out of their container were like nettles, and he picked one up, inspecting its sliver of a body and pin-headed top.
It was just like the one that had come out of Mai’s skin.
But . . . it wasn’t possible there was a connection.
Rising to his feet, he looked around the sitting room with fresh eyes. Except, come on, like he expected Marquist to have a meat hook hanging on the back of the door?
Proceeding into the bedroom area, Boone checked out the bedside table, ducked under the bed skirt—another meat-hook-free zone—and opened the blanket chest in the corner.
Which had blankets in it, natch.
He was turning around toward the open closet when the heating fan came on, a barely perceptible draft of cool air the preamble to the hot stuff—provided, of course, the electricity wasn’t cut again.
And that was when he caught the scent. It was so subtle, he