death stink, so the first thing I did at HQ was to strip in the locker room, shower, wash my hair, and dress in fresh clothes. I didn’t bother to dry my mop but twisted it into a bun before I put the stinky clothing into a sink with hot water, hand soap, and a cup of baking soda from the break room. Then I took my tablet and caught up on my files while sitting in the null room, as the chill of antimagics crept into my bones. Unfortunately, soap and null energies did nothing to stop the stench that was trapped in my sinuses and memory.
An hour later, I had a short list of questions, unanswered inconsistencies, and timeline problems. I left the null room to the paramedics and EMTs who delivered Thomas Langer, his sister Robinelle, and two other patients for a stint in the antimagic room. Thomas was free from the ventilator and waved at me, gave a thumbs-up, as we passed in the hallway. It was reminiscent of the gesture he had given me in the ambulance as he pulled away from Melody Horse Farm on day one. I was glad he still had a thumb. And someone would be taking his statement while he nulled out. Even if it was JoJo Jones herself.
The stench trailing behind the stretchers reminded me to rinse out my clothes and hang them up in the locker room. I hung them over the sink with my undies hidden behind my outer clothes. Some girlhood habits never died.
I checked on JoJo, who was multitasking and talking on the phone, and went to my desk, spending hours on files, reports, and answering the calls that got by Jo. Info came in, but it was all insignificant. I was getting good at saying nothing with a lot of words, comforting nothings to family, stilted nothings to the press. JoJo interviewed Langer when he came in to be nullified, but she learned nothing new either. I learned just how difficult it was to carry patients up narrow stairs and how badly we needed the elevator that had never been installed in the back.
I forgot lunch. Midafternoon, my stomach reminded me and I raided the break room fridge for leftovers, putting pizza into the microwave to heat, and walked into the conference room. Today Jo was wearing dozens of long clip-on braids in several shades of brown and gold, the braids woven in a complicated bun with long hanging braids and little gold beads woven into it. It looked heavy and uncomfortable and gorgeous. She was dressed in a black military-style jacket, gold braiding at the shoulders and epaulets, and silky gold frog closures. Some of the churchwomen made bespoke clothing like this, and . . .
“Mama Grace makes fabulous knotted and tied frogs like that,” I said.
JoJo canted her head at me, her scarlet-painted lips stretching into a smile. “I did not go behind your back and get your church ladies to make my clothes. If I’d wanted them to do my clothes, I’d have told you first.”
“Ummm. Okay?”
“Uh-huh. This came from a consignment shop.” Her tone went smug and amused. “Someone in your church made it for the previous owner, some rich woman. Which makes me an astounding fashion-conscious-shopper-on-a-budget.”
I chuckled. “You look fantastic. I wish I had half as much fashion sense as you do.”
“When this case is over, we’ll do a girls’ day out and hit the high-end consignment shops. Then get massages. And maybe we’ll charge it to His Almighty FireWind. You ever had a massage?”
“No. And I’ll be honest. I’m not real comfortable at the idea of a stranger rubbing up on me.”
“Put that way, me neither.”
I had a feeling she was laughing at me. Jo sat back and cracked her knuckles, her scarlet fingernails flashing. “Where are you?” She meant on the investigation.
“I got thoughts and questions.” I put my list of curiosities up on the screen. “What can you tell me about the timeline of the T-shirts? Some of the sick never touched the shirts. So far as I know were never in the room with the shirts. Yet they’re sick or dead.”
“T-shirt timeline, I have. The band manager handled ordering swag for the tour and the screen-printing company shipped them in boxes. The roadies opened the boxes and packed them in heavy-duty plastic bins, according to size, for easy transporting back and forth. They took forty T-shirt bins, unpacked from forty-eight T-shirt boxes, with them on