off the uni, put it in the bio container, and made my way outside. The fresh air was such a relief that I nearly threw up anyway, just getting out of the reek. Crunching my mint, I made my way to a camp stove one of the sheriff’s deputies had set up and poured coffee from an old metal percolator into a foam cup. It wasn’t the thick black sludge for which cop-shops were known, but strong, aromatic coffee. I breathed the steam and scent.
Holding my cup under my nose, cameras in the crook of an arm, I retired to my car to write up reports, package the film for mailing to the lab, and send the last photos to JoJo. Too sick to actually drink the coffee, I popped another of the super-strong mints and sucked on it for a while to take the stench out of my mouth and calm the nausea. When I could hold down the brew, I sipped, studying the photos. I was halfway through the cup when I noticed some odd things, small incongruities, but any peculiarity could be important. Cases were often solved by small observations and irregularities.
I went back and forth, comparing the digital photos submitted by the first LEOs on the scene to the ones I had just taken. There were opened boxes of swag in the room, one of them T-shirts. It was the only full box. Why full? Why not half-full? Or nearly empty? Did that matter? Was it important? And . . . all the empty boxes in the corner were marked with plasticized shipping labels. But in the original photo, the box beside Monica Belcher had no label. I went through dozens of cop-photos from every angle, to make sure. No shipping label, not even fallen on the floor. Had the label been torn off when the box was opened? Or maybe it was on the bottom. That made sense.
In one photo taken by a cop of the inside of the box, there was a second oddity. Resting on top of the shirts was a green glass bottle holding a length of wire, like coat hanger wire. In the bottom was a skim of what looked like pale green liquid. The shirts were not folded or neat, but crushed and wrinkled, shoved into one corner as if to hold the bottle upright.
I compared that photo to mine. Sitting amid the T-shirts, upside down in mine, was a bottle, but in my photo the glass was blackened, the color hidden among the black shirts. The wire was a corroded black twig. The clear, pale green liquid was gone.
I edited out a section of the pic to show only the T-shirts and went to find a band member. Instead, I found Etain. The witch was draped across the four-board fence, her head resting on her arms, breathing through her mouth, carefully not moving. Horses’ hooves pounded in the darkness, moving upwind and away from the stench of death we both carried.
“This helped for me.” I held out one of the extra-strong breath mints. I wished I had candied ginger, but hindsight was useless.
She pushed herself slowly away from the fence, took the small package, and opened it, the plastic crinkling. Gingerly, she put the mint on her tongue as if she feared even that much might make her vomit. “How d’ya stand such a sight an’ stink wit’out puking up your guts?”
“I don’t stand it very well. Hence my ignominious rush from the basement and a pocketful of mints.”
“Och.” She met my eyes, hers rueful. “I vomit teilgthe all over the garden,” she said, the words clearly Irish. “Probably killed whatever I puked on. Have you another mint?”
“Crunch it,” I advised, holding out more.
Etain took several, her teeth crunching the first. She lifted a water bottle from the third fence rail, swished her mouth with water, swallowed, then crunched again, and swished some more. “Brilliant,” she said.
“Your sister is with the band, right?” I asked.
“Aye. Besides her lovely voice, Catriona’s a whiz with traditional Irish instruments. Stella Mae hired her for some sessions last fall and she fit in with the band like a hand in a glove. Stella asked her to join the band for the whole tour. Cattie was ecstatic. I’ve never seen her so happy.” She opened a new mint and put it on her tongue, this time sucking slowly.
“What does she play?”
“Both kinds of Celtic harp, tin whistles, the bodhran, which is like a wide,