JoJo said, “Hang on. I’ll put it on the screen.” She pushed a small stand over the album, a thin metal candy cane–sized and –shaped thing rising in the middle. On its tip was a tiny camera and the album appeared overhead on the main screen.
As she worked, I said, “In all the photos from the online commune site and the marriage, her face was missing or blurred or partially hidden.” I flipped the loose photos front and back. Some had names. Most didn’t.
Tandy said, “We have Racine Alcock’s face in focus . . .” He flipped back through the album. “Once.” He tapped a photo. “With age-progression software we can get an idea what she might look like. Change her hair color, hair length, style, weight gain or loss. We can get several versions of what she might look like now.”
FireWind said, “Go through all of these with a fine-toothed comb.”
“Wait,” I said. I flipped an old photo back and forth. It was a school photo, like ones used for middle school yearbooks, with a name on back. “Her name was Elizabeth Racine Alcock.”
“Gimme,” JoJo demanded. I slid the photo to her and she went to work, keys clacking.
“One thing I find curious,” I said, “though I think you all already know it.”
FireWind looked mildly interested.
“No one on this unit believes in coincidences. But you used the term liquid goo to describe the victims here at the house and in Cale’s car. We’ve been using the word melted. There was melted wax in the barn loft. And the kettles contained liquefied—melted or gooey—human remains. And we have the graveyards.”
T. Laine said, “Some of my contacts have speculated that death and decay might use liquefied bodies and graveyard dirt as part of the curse, energies, whatever it really is. I’ll contact them and get an update.”
Occam said, “Nell hasn’t updated her files yet, but she made a good speculation yesterday.”
I blinked. I made a good speculation? What was it? I looked the question at Occam, but it popped into my consciousness. “Oh. Right. We have at least one man who was driving a car when he was likely already dead or so close to dead his body was falling apart before he started driving. There may be no records of such creatures as necromancers, but this practitioner has some skill sets that fall into that category.”
FireWind made a sound that might have been a Cherokee grunt of interest. Jo’s eyes gleamed. T. Laine’s face pulled into a hard frown. “That would be bad,” she said.
JoJo said, “To make that speculation something stronger, I have traffic cam footage of Cale Nowell’s car running a red light and nearly hitting another vehicle. The other car’s headlights gave us a good view inside Cale’s car.” A photo appeared on a screen, showing blurry Cale Nowell behind the wheel of a car. His eyes were already starting to whiten out, which was a symptom we had noted only after a death and decay body was dead.
“Necromancer,” FireWind said, as if testing the word on his tongue, his eyes going unfocused in thought.
The meeting broke up soon after and Occam pressed my hand as he left the room. It left me with a warm feeling and helped to settle the worries I had about the future and the living arrangements over the next few weeks.
* * *
* * *
My workday was office stuff: updating files, rereading Clementine’s dictation and making corrections, calling to schedule witness and suspect interviews, which would be conducted by T. Laine and Tandy in Cookeville, not me. I did a lot of sitting at my desk or in the conference room, and not a lot of moving around, which left me tired and a little achy, after all the exposure to death, so at three p.m. in the warmest part of the day, I told JoJo I was taking a break. She grunted that she heard.
With a thunderstorm blowing along the horizon, I pulled running shoes, running clothes, and a thin hoodie out of my locker, decided they didn’t smell too sweaty-stinky, and dressed for exercise. My weapon covered, ID and badge in a pocket, I grabbed my cell, hooked it to my comms headset, and left the building. I had learned the hard way to check the parking lot really carefully, to watch for cars pulling out when I left, to spot a tail. Or an attacker. Which was why after two blocks, I noticed the blue short-bed truck pull