Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,64

calling me that. That’s not my name anymore. Can’t you fucking get that? Jesus Christ, no wonder you’re such a fucking poor excuse for a deputy.”

He sat back in his seat; he cupped his knees with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

“Let’s call it a night,” he said, shifting the car into gear. “We can pick up tomorrow.”

“No, Dag, please. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said, and we pulled away from the curb.

“Means, motive, and opportunity,” I said. “Talk to me about that.”

Bending, he groped with one hand under the seat, searching for something.

“Ok,” I said, “ok, I’ll talk about means, motive, and opportunity. Means. She can turn into a monster. She can turn into a firefly. She can possess people, but she can also . . . suggest that they do something terrible. Ray, Mason, Tamika. With David and with us, though, she attacked as a monster. That means she can’t always possess people. Not right away. She needs an opening. An opportunity. Maybe it takes time.”

Pulling a cassette adapter from under the seat, he tried to untangle the cable one handed.

“Here,” I said, “let me help—”

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“I want to—”

“Just stop, Elien.”

“Right, ok, sorry. Motive. The motive is—”

“Stop it with that too, ok?”

“It was your idea. You had a good idea, and we should follow it up.”

“I’d like some quiet, please.”

“Opportunity,” I said.

He hit the brakes. We were still in a residential part of La Grange, and the taillights painted the houses around us red. Aside from us, the road was empty. Dag’s chest rose and fell rapidly.

“Once, Elien. Just once, it’d be nice if you weren’t so fucking self-centered. Is that so fucking much to ask?”

I sat very still. My hands buzzed like I’d grabbed a swarm of bees. At the very end of the street, a light came on, and I thought for a moment that Dag had woken them up, that everyone had heard him. But, of course, he’d been very quiet when he’d said those words. The way he said and did everything.

“Well?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then I’d like some quiet on the drive home.”

For thirty seconds, Dag messed with the tangled cable of the cassette adapter. Then he swore and threw it on the floor. Taking his foot off the brake, he let us roll forward again. In a few more minutes, we’d reached the end of the street, and we turned, and I couldn’t see that single light in the house behind us anymore.

That was all of it, for a while: the thrum of the tires, the sheared-off ends of Dag’s breathing, the traffic lights shedding green-yellow-red auras across the asphalt. I could feel my fingers again, and I pulled out my phone. It was easier to think about the hashok and how I could stop it than to think about Dag, about how his eyes looked darker than ever, how he kept blinking, and his breathing never seemed to get back to normal.

I googled the Louisiana Mental Health Professionals Network. I wanted to find the schedule for this week’s conference. I had the vague idea that I could contact the people who had organized the evening panels and see if I could track down Zahra. If she hadn’t attended any of the panels, that would explain how she had managed to get back to Bragg and attack us. If she’d been at a panel tonight, then she had an alibi, and I needed to start thinking more creatively.

But two minutes of clicking and scrolling and searching yielded nothing. I stared at my phone, not quite able to believe what I was seeing.

The Louisiana Mental Health Professionals Network had their next annual conference in April. Nothing on their website said anything about an event in October. I tried to search more broadly, googling mental health conferences, October, New Orleans, and combinations and variations of those phrases.

Nothing.

When we stopped at the next traffic light, I said, “I know you’re upset with me, but can I please ask a favor?”

“What?”

“Zahra lied to me. She said that she and Richard were staying in New Orleans tonight because of a conference.”

“It’s barely an hour drive. Why would they stay overnight?”

“Sometimes dinners go late, and sometimes they have panels first thing the next morning. Besides, it’s mostly an excuse to drink and have fun, whatever that looks like for psychiatrists.” Ahead of us, the traffic light was still red; the humid air glowed hazily around it. “But she lied. There’s no conference this week.