stepped. Glided. He was grace personified, and I had met vamps who could do the grace thing better than anyone. FireWind was right up there with the vampiest. “I have some calls to make,” he said. “And since I ate the last of the stew, I’ll order in supper for you two. What do you want?”
JoJo said, “How about burgers from the Burgers on Sutherland Ave. They don’t deliver this far, but they are the best, and you can do pickup while you talk on the phone. You can’t beat their food. I’ll have a Knox Burger.”
“I’ll have the Black and Blue,” I said.
He had to know we were trying to get rid of him, but FireWind gave us a formal nod, rinsed the dishes in the break room sink, and left the building. I had to hold in a giggle as he walked past the outside security cameras. JoJo had just sent the big boss on a food run. The tension in HQ fell dramatically the moment he got in his car.
“Aren’t you a vegetarian?” I asked Jo.
“Most of the time. Not tonight. Thank God he’s gone. It’s hard enough looking at sex pics, but to do it with your boss in and out constantly?” JoJo said. “Your boss who is drop-dead gorgeous. And who has the best poker face on the planet. I can’t read him at all. Gives me the creeps.” She swiveled and stared me down in my seat in the corner. “You okay?”
I scowled at her. “Put all the sex pics back up on the big screens. And the photos of the dead bodies in Stella’s basement. I gotta get used to looking at that stuff.”
Without turning, JoJo tapped a single key and a dozen of the pics appeared overhead. Seven naked people. On a big mattress with lots of pillows, scrunched-up covers, and body parts. Doing things. Partially out of focus but not out of focus enough to hide all that. I closed my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Jo said. “Occam doesn’t want that. Well, he might think about wanting it, but he doesn’t really.” I stilled and she added, “He’s a guy. People think things all the time. That doesn’t mean they go through with them. That’s why we police people for what they’ve done, and not for what they might do. Well, usually.” She smiled slightly.
“Are you sure?” I asked, meaning the part about Occam, which she seemed to know.
“That man loves you more than anyone I’ve ever seen love anyone on the face of the earth.” She waved a hand. “You know what I mean.”
I did. Sorta. I stared at the screens, looking back and forth between sex photos and dead body photos. “Why’s it harder to look at sex than to look at the dead bodies?”
“Our culture says death and violence are okay but sex isn’t. And your church culture says it’s worse than anything.”
“Everyone on the unit knows that? About my culture? About the church?”
“Honey,” she said, sounding a little sad, but not pitying, which was good because I’d get real mad at any kind of pity. “Everyone on the unit knows. Everyone wants to protect you and help you through your constraints so you can be the best special agent that ever lived.”
“Oh,” I said. I looked at the photos again. There were six pictures on the biggest screen, bodies everywhere doing everything. “FireWind says I’ll never get used to it.”
“No. You will never get used to it. But you will learn to hide your reactions and to study the photos for information. For instance, look at every photo. In every one of them, one person is right beside, or under, or over, Stella. Always close. Always right there.”
“Ohhh,” I said. “The missing woman? Racine Alcock?”
“Yeah. Hanging on to Stella like a lifeline.
“And then there’s this.” She put up a photo of seven people, all the men in tuxedoes, all the women in long gowns. Long white gowns, some off the shoulder, some lacy. The women carried flowers. Two of them wore veils over their faces. They all stood together in a semicircle. A man wearing a dark robe, like some preachers wore, stood in the center of them. It looked like a wedding with seven participants. Stella Mae had gotten . . . poly-married? I wasn’t sure of the term. Or if there was one.
“It wasn’t a legal marriage,” JoJo said. “It isn’t registered anywhere. But they had a ceremony. And they recorded it for posterity.”