loud thump sounded as something heavy hit the earth. I didn’t have a hard hat so I didn’t go around back to see.
Carrying my gear and the potted tree, I went inside, climbed the stairs, and stopped at my cubby. I set down my plant, checked its soil for moisture content, locked away my weapon, and put my lunch in the break room. I also made a fresh pot of coffee the instant I braved the main conference room, which had been taken over by JoJo Jones, Unit Eighteen’s computer guru and former (mostly) hacker, who was staring at her screens. The long table was covered with printed pages, file folders, and electronic equipment. There were multiple screens of various sizes on the walls. The lights were dim, the blinds closed. JoJo was sitting in her chair, her big braided bun tilted forward, her silver earrings catching the light of the screens, her body unmoving, fingers still. She didn’t seem to be breathing and I wasn’t sure if she had died in that position until she blinked.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she demanded without looking my way.
I nearly jumped at the sound of her voice, but took my seat and opened my tablet. “Connelly died because she didn’t get to a null room,” I said quietly. “No one in authority understood that they had to, that they could, bring patients to HQ. Communication broke down.”
Jo cursed succinctly and forcefully. “I told the person who answered the desk on the paranormal wing. I’ve got the name here.” Jo started punching keys, looking for the file she wanted. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t left HQ and her computers since the case began. She was wearing heavy yoga pants, a thick black headband, an oversized sweatshirt, and no makeup. “Here it is. The woman’s name was Marielle Higgins. I told her about the null room. She said she would relay the information to the doctor. I told her!”
“Jo. The failure to communicate was on them, not us,” I said, trying to comfort.
“Not being at fault is not going to bring anyone back from the dead,” she snarled. She looked sleep-deprived and as snarly as she sounded.
“No. It isn’t,” I said.
“Give me something I can use to prove how this crime works, something I can then track down to a practitioner, something other than a trigger, a trigger that the North Nashville coven can’t figure out and never heard of at all.” JoJo snarled the last two words.
I said, “Stella Mae lived in a commune-like place, back five years ago, before she became a star.”
JoJo slowly turned her head to me and breathed out the words, “That’s what you meant with that list? I thought it was people she had in common . . .” Her eyes focused on the air above my head. “I thought it was misspelled and . . . Ohhh. The missing years.”
“Beg pardon?”
“There are missing years in Stella’s public and personal data stream. If she was in a commune, she may have eschewed everything modern. That would make sense.”
I said, “Yeah. She might have.”
“Where? Who?” Jo asked.
“I got no idea. But according to the lists provided by the late-night sandwich makers, Bevie Rhoden and Elisa Yhall, one of her band members might have been part of the commune. Thomas Langer.”
“Bevie Rhoden and Elisa Yhall.” Jo ran a search for the photos of the lists. “Your files from the scene are well organized,” she muttered, her fingers now flying over the keys. “Commune? It’s a place to start. Okay. Let’s find the hidden records.”
I went back to work organizing the unit’s case files and interrogation results. It was both interesting and mind-numbingly boring. Hours passed. I drank a lot of coffee. I prepared a lunch of salad greens from my garden and microwaved leftover stew and cut up a hunk of homemade bread for Jo and me. I put a portion for FireWind in the fridge. I took one call from Mud and Esther in which they whispered angrily at one another during church service while I listened. I hung up, midscream. They knew to text something specific if it was a real emergency. Of course, they also knew better than to call me at work over a sisters’ spat.
“I got it. I got it, I got it,” JoJo said, breaking the afternoon’s doldrums. “I got the commune. Holy sh . . . oot. I got it. And . . .”