"While fascinating and gross, that can't be this woman. "
"How do you know?"
"Because she's the wife of Paul Heilig, the chief of police. And she died in a car wreck in Europe. I saw the photos of it."
Ravyn went cold at her words as they confirmed his suspicions. "What?"
"You heard me." She flipped through the pictures until she got to one of the Daimon with two very tall blond men, who were also dressed as Bela Lugosi vampires, and a short, pudgy man with dark hair, highlighted with gray, and glasses, dressed as an explorer. The man appeared to be around the age of fifty, with thinning hair and sharp gray eyes. "That's her, her sons, and her husband."
Ravyn narrowed his gaze on them before he looked up at Susan. "Don't you think it odd that the chief of police is married to a woman who looks to be the same age as her children?"
"Plastic surgery, baby. Some of the best surgeons in the country live right here."
"Yeah, and so do some of the best Daimons."
Susan went cold as she stared at the woman, and her emotions sobered. It all made sense now. "It's just what you said, isn't it? He married an Apollite who turned Daimon, and now he's using his position to keep them safe."
"Except for the wife I killed. No wonder they wanted to torture me in the..." His voice trailed off as he remembered something the half-Apollite vet had said.
"Paul wants to see this one suffer...."
Since he didn't know who Paul was, he'd completely forgotten that. But now he understood. Paul was Paul Heilig. Chief of Police and father of two Daimon sons.
They were screwed.
"When did you kill her?" Susan asked.
"I don't know. About two months ago, maybe."
That was around the same time the chief's wife had died. Susan remembered the articles about it clearly. No body had been returned to the States for a funeral, but they had held a memorial service for her.
Of course if she was a Daimon, there wouldn't have been a body to bury. Oddly enough, it made a perfect cover.
Ob jeez, now you're thinking like Leo. But then Leo wasn't the crackpot she'd taken him for...
"Do you remember anything about her?"
"Yeah," he said breathlessly. "She was a nasty bitch with a mean left hook."
"Not that," Susan snapped. "Something that could help us identify her as the chief of police's wife."
"The words get out of jail free card-"
"Maybe she played a lot of Monopoly. Who knows what weirdness Daimons partake in to pass the time." At his withering stare she held her hands up in surrender. "Okay, bad stab on my part. Please continue."
"Couple that with Jimmy's paranoia that someone high up in his department was covering up murders and disappearances. C'mon, Susan, this is too much to be coincidence."
"I know I'm playing devil's advocate here. We have to have concrete proof before we accuse this man of framing us and hiding murders."
"Susan..." he said in a chiding tone.
"Look, Ravyn, I already ruined my life because something that looked like a duck and quacked like a duck turned out to be a tiger with an entire battery of attorneys bent on taking everything I might ever own again. All the evidence was there, clear-cut and perfect, and I leaped at it and, in the morning, everything that said he was guilty was just a bad coincidence for me. I don't want to make that mistake again." She held up her wrist to show him the scars she still bore. "I really don't want to relive my past."
Ravyn's gut clenched at the sight of the scars where she'd cut her wrist. "Susan..."
"Don't patronize me, okay? I know it was stupid. But I was completely alone. Everything I'd ever believed in caved in on my head and I had to sit through lawsuit after lawsuit until the rubble settled and left me homeless, friendless, and hopeless. I clawed myself up every morning from bed so that I could be kicked again. And then I decided that though I was ruined, I wasn't dead, and that my life, such as it was, was mine and I refused to let them take that from me, too. I've come a long way, but it's been hard and brutal, and the last thing I want is to accuse an upstanding, highly decor-rated official and relive that nightmare all over again. Understand?"
Ravyn's throat tightened at the pain he heard in her voice, the agony she held in her eyes. He kissed her wrist, and held it in his hand as he locked gazes with her. "You won't ever relive that, Susan. I promise you."