New Decameron Sixty-Eight: Lisa Goldstein (Patreon)

Excerpt from an untitled new novel 

By Lisa Goldstein

Dana parked the patrol car in a space reserved for visitors. Her partner Caleb was looking up at the house and made no move to get out. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s one of those circles,” he said. “The Lights, they’re called. I told you I recognized the address.”

She followed his gaze, taking in the vast house, the gables and towers, the walls covered in intricate carvings. She felt a flutter in her stomach, a reaction against anything to do with magic, but she forced it away. “So?” she asked.

They got out of the car and headed across the parking lot. “So these people are secretive as hell. Forget about getting answers from them.”

“Are you sure? The circle in Fresno talks to anyone -- they even have tours.”

He was looking at her strangely now. “I grew up in Fresno,” she said, trying not to sound defensive.

“Really?”

She had never told him about her childhood, not in the two years they’d worked together. It wasn’t just him, though; she rarely mentioned it to anyone. She had put the town and her upbringing behind her, and there was nothing to be gained from looking back.

It was only after she’d left that she’d realized how strange the town had been. The kid who’d sworn he’d seen a monster rising up from the lake, with a vast serpent’s head like the prow of a ship. The old woman who claimed her great-grandparents had fought in the Chaos Wars. The fogs that blew up in any weather, with no cause that any meteorologist could find.

“My parents like living near the water,” she said now. “And it’s cheap.”

“I bet.”

To her relief he didn’t pursue it. “Anyway, but these guys have a reputation,” he went on. “They keep to themselves, don’t mix with the outside world. They’ll turn you into a toad if you ask too many questions, or something worse. A Bango fan.”

Who or what was Bango? Most celebrities were a mystery to her, though Caleb talked about them all the time. Sometimes it seemed as if they came from two different worlds.

“How come you know so much about these guys?” she asked. “The -- what did you say they were, the Lights?”

“I got interested in circles once. Read some books.”

She stopped herself before she asked why. They had a good working relationship, but one of the reasons it held together was that they only talked about the job. Maybe, like a lot of kids, he’d wanted to join a circle once and felt embarrassed about it now.

“Well, they asked for us, not the other way around,” Dana said. “They have to be straight with us.” 

Caleb laughed, a short cynical sound. “Yeah, when pigs freeze over,” he said.

Dana looked behind her and saw orchards and pastures and about a dozen smaller buildings, possibly barns or workshops. Tall trees stood farther back, planted close together to serve as a fence. “Big place,” she said, as they headed along the side of the house.

“Yeah. And if they’re the people I’m thinking of, they’re influential as hell. Just be careful, is what I’m saying.” 

They came to the front door and she pressed the bell. A peephole darkened and they stood still a moment, aware of being watched.

Finally the door opened, and a man peered out. His hair was black and cut very oddly, most of it cropped close to his head but with patches springing up like weeds. He would have looked thin in any case, but his clothes, as black as his hair, made him seem cadaverous.

“I’m Dana Morrell, and this is my partner Caleb Jepson, from the Haven Homicide Division,” Dana said. “You called about a suspicious death.”

“Right.” The man was looking at Caleb for some reason. “This way.”

He opened the door wider. They passed through a two-story foyer and several dim hallways, Dana’s boots sounding against the wooden floors. They passed a few other people, all of them wearing the same clothes as the doorkeeper: black trousers, a black shirt and vest and jacket, clearly a uniform of some kind. “Here we are,” the man said.

He ushered them into a room. Dana saw a desk as big as a parking space, its surface empty, the dark wood gleaming under the lights. Several comfortable-looking chairs were arranged in front of it.

“We’d like to see the body first,” Dana said.

“I’ll tell the Binder you’re here,” the man said. He was still talking to Caleb; it hadn’t been an accident the first time. “You’ll have to stay in his office -- everything else is off-limits.”

He left, closing the door behind him. “The Binder?” Dana said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“They all have those kinds of names,” Caleb said. “Weaver, Fabricator, like that. What did they call them in Fresno?”

“I don’t remember. No, wait -- the Mother.”

She paced back and forth, impatient. The walls were carved like the outside of the house, pictures that looked like a mix of bird scratches and Egyptian hieroglyphics. A gold plaque hung behind the desk, a relief of two crossed torches, one lit and the other dark. Groups of photographs covered the walls, all showing a stocky older man with black hair and black clothes, a short thick beard, and glasses with heavy black frames. He stood with a different official or celebrity in each picture, talking or shaking their hands. The others were smiling or even laughing, but the man had a tight-lipped, superior look, as if he knew things about the others in the photo, none of them good.

Dana looked at her phone. “It’s been ten minutes,” she said. “Is that an insult, do you think?”

Caleb shook his head. “One of their members died, remember. They probably have more important things to do.”

“Or they’re getting rid of evidence.”

“They could have done that before they called us.”

The time stretched out, fifteen minutes, twenty. “If they don’t come soon I’m going outside,” she said. “Either that or look through his desk.”

The door opened, and the man in the photos came in. “Hello,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I’m Binder Widmarsh.”

They introduced themselves. “We’d like to see the body before we do anything else, sir,” Dana said.

“I should give you some background first,” Widmarsh said. He settled himself behind the desk, and Dana and Caleb took the chairs in front of him. Dana’s feet barely reached the floor, and she wondered if the taller chairs were on purpose, some kind of power play. “We know who killed Julia Banning, as it happens. A girl named Gwen Bell. We’d like you to find her.”

“How do you know?” Dana asked.

Widmarsh spoke to Caleb, as if he’d been the one to ask the question. “She’s missing. She ran away during the night, and she took a book with her. A very valuable book.”

“A book?” Dana said.

Widmarsh turned to her finally. He took in her clothes first, from the nondescript jacket and trousers to the leather boots, her one departure from the Homicide dress code. Then he studied her face, the brown hair and darker brown eyes, the thick eyebrows, the bumpy nose that had been broken in childhood. His stare went on long enough to make her feel uncomfortable, but she looked back at him without flinching.

He broke away first. “That’s what I said.”

“What kind of book?”

“We believe that Julia stole the book from the library. They must have argued over it, and Gwen killed her.”

“What kind of book, sir?” Dana asked again.

“I really wish you’d let me tell the story from the beginning,” Widmarsh said.

“We need to know what the book looks like, if you want it back.”

“Oh, you’ll know it when you see it. It’s bound in leather, and the frame and clasp are silver, inlaid with garnets.”

What kind of book had a clasp? Widmarsh turned back to Caleb, but he was writing something in his small notebook. Without making a big deal of it, he had found a way to show Widmarsh who was in charge.

“At any rate,” Widmarsh said. His gaze settled somewhere between her and her partner. He had to be too old for that glossy black hair and black beard, without a hint of gray. Did he dye them? Did all the people in the house dye their hair the same shade? “The girls performed some kind of magic. I say ‘performed,’ but they made a botch of it from beginning to end, and the result was that someone was killed.”

“Wait a minute,” Dana said. “Did Gwen kill Julia over the book, or was it an accident? It can’t be both.”

“I don’t see why not. They argued, Gwen tried to work a spell, and of course it got out of hand.”

“Why of course?”

He sighed, as if his patience had come to an end. “I really wish they’d sent us someone who understands these things,” he said.

“No one in Homicide knows magic, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. You there -- Mr. Jepson, is that your name? Could you please tell her what I’m talking about?”

She knew what he was saying, that he wanted to talk to a man. Caleb continued writing in his notebook, not looking up. “You’ll have to deal with me, I’m afraid,” Dana said.

“Not necessarily. I could call Al right now and have him send someone else.”

Who was Al? God, he was talking about the lieutenant, Albert Ruggiero. She had rarely heard anyone call him by his first name, let alone a nickname.

“Or he could promote Mr. Jepson here, make him your superior,” Widmarsh went on.

“Sure, go ahead. We’ll wait.”

They were both bluffing, she thought. He probably didn’t know Ruggiero as well as he claimed; she hadn’t seen the Lieut in any of the photographs on the wall. On the other hand she knew that Ruggiero would have no problem sending another officer if Widmarsh insisted. They sat a moment, waiting.

Widmarsh sighed again, breaking the silence. “Well, I’d like this cleared up as soon as possible, and of course I want our book back. I suppose we’ll just have to make the best of it. We have a photograph of Gwen here somewhere, I’m sure. That should be enough, shouldn’t it?”

“We still need to see the body,” Dana said. “And to talk to Gwen’s friends.”

He looked at her briefly, with the same condescending expression she’d seen in the photos. “Why?”

“They might know where she is. She could have mentioned a place she liked to visit.”

“I doubt very much --” A commotion came from outside the study. “What is that lightless racket?”

He stood and went to the door, and they followed. The man who had let them in came running up. “They’re from Medical Examiner’s office, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry -- I couldn’t stop them.”

Widmarsh hurried down the corridors, Dana and Caleb still behind him. Someone wearing a suit of white protective plastic was stringing a “Caution” tape across an open doorway, and there were two other protective suits inside, studying a body on the floor.

“Here, what are you doing?” Widmarsh asked.

“We can’t allow anyone to go in there, sir,” the man with the tape said.

“Who’s in charge here?”

One of the plastic suits in the room came forward. Dana couldn’t see who it was; the hood and gauze mask covered most of the face. “I am, sir,” a voice said through the mask. “Dr. Roberta Moncada. I’m the Medical Examiner.” She held out her hand.

Dana nearly laughed. Another woman: Widmarsh would have a coronary before the day was over.

“And who allowed you to come bursting in here, telling me where I can and can’t go in my own house?” he asked, ignoring the hand.

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” Moncada said. “We have to treat everything in there as evidence. Has anyone moved her, or touched her in any way?”

“I’m sure someone did. We had to see what happened to her, after all.”

“Who discovered the body?”

“I have no idea.” He looked around impatiently for the doorkeeper and summoned him with a wave of his hand. “Here, ask around, see who found her.”

“Can we have a look at her?” Dana asked Moncada.

“Only from the doorway, for now,” Moncada said. “I’ll let you know when you can come in.”

Dana studied the woman on the floor. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open; something had terrified her before she died. Dana made an effort to look away from her face, from the story of horror written there. She wore a skirt and blouse and kerchief, all of them dark green, and a brown vest. Long light-brown hair pooled on the floor behind her.

The man stringing the tape had joined the other two crouching around the body. “Seventeen, eighteen years old,” Moncada called to Dana. “Brown hair, green eyes. Looks, oh, five feet nine, healthy, maybe a little too thin. No wounds on this side that I can see.”

“Can you turn her over?” Dana asked.

Two of the suits were taking pictures with their cell phones. Moncada said something to them when they stopped, and they put their hands beneath the body and turned it over carefully. There were no bullet holes or stab wounds on that side either, no obvious cause of death.

“Any ideas?” Dana asked.

“No, sorry,” Moncada said. “I’ll be able to tell you more after the autopsy, of course. There doesn’t seem to be a weapon -- I was hoping she was lying on it.”

Now Dana noticed that the room had no furniture or paintings or windows: just the woman, the carved walls, and some lights set into the ceiling. The wood seemed ancient, shining darkly where the light hit it.

“I told you. It was magic.”

She turned and saw Widmarsh; she had forgotten he was there. “Would the autopsy show that?” she asked Moncada.

The other woman laughed, clearly thinking that she was making a joke. “I’ll let you know.”

“All right,” Dana said to Widmarsh. “We need a room to ourselves, somewhere we can ask questions. Who would know the names of Gwen’s friends?”

He shrugged. “The Housemother, I suppose.”

Housemother, what a name. She had a brief image of a woman surrounded by a brood of small houses. “We’ll talk to her first, then. Can we use your study?”

He looked horrified. “Of course not. Come on, I’ll find you something.”

He turned away, and she grinned at Caleb. She’d had the feeling that Widmarsh had wanted to refuse to give her a room, and that the threat of losing his study had made him reconsider.

He led them down the hallway and into a laundry room. Industrial-sized washing machines and dryers lined the walls, a few of them whirring and clicking to themselves. The room was hot and smelled of detergent and bleach, and faintly of stale, sweaty clothing. The linoleum floor was sticky with powder. She thought about complaining, but this was probably the best they could do.

At least there was a table here, probably for folding clothes. She and Caleb grabbed some chairs and set them around it. “It can’t be magic, can it?” she asked him.

“Of course it can,” he said. “Come on, you said you grew up in Fresno. And you had to have studied the Chaos Wars in school.”

“What about the Truce of Krakow, though? They said they’d never fight with magic again.”

“Not all of them.”

She hadn’t known that, or had forgotten it. Caleb sat at the table and took out his notebook. “God, I hope it isn’t magic,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Well, because we’ll never get to the bottom of it if it is. They don’t talk about that stuff to outsiders.”

“Why do you think she -- Julia -- wasn’t wearing black like everyone else? Because she’s a woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, make a guess. Live dangerously.” 

Someone knocked at the open door. Dana looked up and saw a stout middle-aged woman dressed in the same drab colors as Julia. “Come in,” she called.

The woman -- the Housemother, Dana supposed -- sat opposite them and nodded at Caleb. Not another one, she thought. “We’d like to talk to Gwen’s friends,” she said. “We were hoping you could tell us who they are.”

The Housemother turned to Dana, reluctantly, as if struggling with the idea that a woman could be in charge. “She didn’t have a lot of friends. It was her and Julia, mostly.”

“Well, but they must have hung out with other people, at least sometimes. Did she or Julia have a boyfriend?”

The Housemother blushed, a light red moving up from the high collar of her blouse to her kerchief. “The girls don’t have boyfriends, sir. Ma’am.”

“But they talk about boys, don’t they? I mean that’s normal, girls that age.” 

“We try to discourage that sort of thing. Anyway, Gwen’s too far young.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifteen.”

Old enough, Dana thought. Could Gwen and Julia have fallen out over a boy, or a man? “Well, can you send over some girls who might have known her? Or known Julia?”

The Housemother stood and made a motion that Dana, a second later, realized was a curtsy. “I’ll send in some of Gwen’s dorm-mates, ma’am.”

A few minutes later the Housemother ushered in a cluster of girls. “Can some of you wait outside?” Dana asked. “I’d like to talk to you one at a time.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, ma’am,” the Housemother said. “We’re taking precious time away from their chores as it is.”

Dana sighed. The girls sat around the table and introduced themselves -- Vicki (“with an i,” she said), Rebecca, Lucy, and Nicole. The Housemother stood behind them, her eyes watchful.

“Thanks for coming,” Dana said. “So, were any of you friends with Gwen? Or Julia?”

They were all staring down at the table, saying nothing. “How about you, Vicki?” Dana said. “How well did you know them?”

“I didn’t, not really,” Vicki said, not looking up. “They keep -- they kept to themselves a lot.” Her face scrunched up as if something pained her, remembering that Julia was dead, probably, that she belonged to the past tense now.

“But you must have talked to them, at least sometimes,” Dana said. “They’re the same age as you, right?”

Vicki shook her head. She played with her skirt, folding it back and forth. “Julia was older. She had different dorm-mates.” 

“Did they ever talk about places they liked to go, somewhere outside the house?”

“We don’t go outside,” Nicole said.

“Really? Never?”

“Sometimes,” Vicki said. She looked up at Dana, looked away. “Sometimes one of the Housemothers takes you shopping, if we need something outside.”

“What if you’re sick? If you need a doctor?”

Lucy laughed, a short, scoffing sound. “We don’t need doctors here,” she said. “The circle keeps us healthy.”

Dana sat back. “You know, I’ve never been in a house like this before,” she said easily. “Do you like it here? Living with all these other girls?”  

“Sure,” Lucy said. “We only go into the dorms when we’re twelve, though. Before that we live with our parents.”

“What’s school like here?”

“Oh, we don’t go to classes.” Lucy’s scorn was back.  “We stop that at twelve too. That’s when we start our apprenticeships.”

“What’s an apprenticeship?”

“Don’t you know? Well, they assign us to someone in the house, and we learn how to be cooks or cleaners or seamstresses or under-housemothers. The boys still go to school, though.”

“And what do they study?”

Lucy looked away for a moment, suddenly wary. Had they strayed into a forbidden topic? But Lucy was enjoying herself, Dana saw, explaining her life to an outsider, and had gone too far to stop. “Well, magic,” she said. “And other things too -- I don’t really know.”

“The girls don’t learn magic?”

“No, of course not. We aren’t fit for it. Our job is to take care of the house. You can’t trust a man to do that, after all.”

“So what do you do, in the house?”

“Oh, I’m in the kitchens.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I love cooking.”

“And Gwen? What was she was studying? Or Julia?” Dana turned to a girl who hadn’t spoken yet. “Rebecca?”

“Gwen is -- she worked in the gardens,” Rebecca said. “And I think Julia was a cleaner.”

“God, I can’t believe she’s dead,” Nicole said. “And that Gwen -- that she killed her. She never seemed like -- like someone --”

“So what was she like?”

No one said anything. They seemed to be thinking about the question, but either they hadn’t known Gwen very well or they didn’t want to share their opinion of her.

A tear fell down Vicki’s face and dropped to the table. “I’m sorry. It’s hard to take it all in, you know?”

“Even snow has shadows,” Nicole said. It sounded like a proverb.

Dana asked a few more questions, but Nicole looked about to cry as well, and they all seemed too upset to answer. Were they really that affected by the death of someone who, by their own accounts, they hadn’t been close to? Or were they hiding something, had the Binder or the Housemother warned them not to discuss certain topics?

One last try, Dana thought. “Did Gwen have a boyfriend?”

Rebecca had been looking at the table, running her finger over a stain in the wood. At the word “boyfriend” she glanced up, her eyes shining with curiosity. Finally, Dana thought. A real emotion. “Rebecca?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “I don’t think so.”

“What about a girlfriend?” Dana asked. Caleb frowned at her in warning. She’d asked the question on purpose, though. So far they’d gotten nothing from this interview, and she wanted to shake them up.

“Well, of course,” Rebecca said. “Julia.”

Could she really be that naïve? “Not like that. I mean someone like a boyfriend, only a girl, or a woman. Do you think she and Julia might have been lovers?”

Rebecca’s mouth fell open, and she closed it quickly. Maybe they never talked about homosexuality here, or anything except relationships between men and women. The girls had to have discussed it, though, passing gossip and speculation back and forth.

“I never thought of that,” Rebecca said slowly. Her eyes were eager. “They were really close, like I said.”

“Rebecca!” Nicole said. It was a warning, as clear as if she’d told Rebecca to be quiet.

“Well, I was wondering because there’s such an age difference,” Dana said. “Julia was what -- eighteen years old?”

“Seventeen,” Rebecca said. “And you’re right -- there was something going on with them.”

“Rebecca, you stop that right now,” Lucy said. “We don’t talk that way about other people.”

“Remember the Words,” Vicki said. “Lead us into the light, and the truth.”

“You remember the Words,” Rebecca said. The others were saying something, but she spoke louder, overriding them. “Not one of you is telling the truth right now, and you know it. They were stuck up, both of them, like what they were doing was so important. Like that one time they kept laughing at the Doorkeeper, and when I asked what was so funny they just said I wouldn’t understand. And they sneak away at mealtimes, and they’re always whispering among themselves and then giggling when they see you.”

“Rebecca!” the Housemother said. “Just you wait --”

“Among themselves, you said,” Dana said, speaking over everyone. “So there were more than two of them?”

One of the washing machines clunked to a stop, and Rebecca twitched. She looked back and forth as if trying to find a way out. “No, no. Just Gwen and Julia.”

“But you said ‘among,’ and that means more than two people. If it was just two you’d say ‘between.’”

“Really? We don’t learn that stuff here.”

“How many were there?”

Rebecca moved restlessly in her chair. “Two,” she said. “Gwen and Julia. That’s all.”

Dana looked around the table at the other girls. “Did any of you do that -- go away at mealtimes and talk to Julia and Gwen?”

“Well, sure,” Lucy said. Did the girl ever say anything that didn’t sound mean? “I mean, we all talk to each other.”

“Okay,” Dana said, back to Rebecca again. “So they’re different ages, in different dorm rooms -- how did they become friends?”

“Why are you asking me all these questions? They were friends because no one else was interested. Who wants to talk about old books? It was just her and Gwen at the end.” 

A different tone had come into Rebecca’s voice, bitter and unhappy. She’d been on the outside, Dana saw, wanting desperately to join the popular girls. Did she dislike them enough to give away their secrets?

“What old books? Who --”

“That’s enough!” the Housemother said. “Look at her -- she’s all upset. I’m stopping this right now.”

“We aren’t finished,” Dana said.

“Yes, you are,” the Housemother said. “Come here, chickie. I’ll make you some hot cocoa, would you like that?”

Rebecca brightened. She was probably ignored a lot of the time, Dana thought, too unlovable to be singled out for special treats or assignments. She stood, and the Housemother drew her close in a hug. Dana saw her over the Housemother’s shoulder, sheer happiness suffusing her face. And some triumph along with it, directed at the other girls: she had finally won something.

“It’s lunchtime,” the Housekeeper said, letting go of Rebecca. “They have to go eat.”

She’d get nothing more here, Dana saw. She handed out her card to the girls and the Housemother, knowing none of them would ever call her. “Could you take us to the library now?” she asked the Housemother. 

“The library!” the Housemother said. “Light save us!”

“Let me guess -- we’re not allowed in the library.”

“Well, I should say not!”

“Well, when can we talk to Julia’s friends?”

“Not now. It’s time for lunch, and then they have their work to do.”

“Where’s the Binder?”

“How should I know? He doesn’t tell me his schedule.”

“Okay.” Dana turned to Caleb. “Let’s go find him.”

“He’s probably in his study, though,” the Housemother said, clearly alarmed by the thought of the two of them wandering through the house. “Stay here, and I’ll get someone to take you.”

She and Rebecca left. A few moments later the doorkeeper returned and led them back to the study, then tapped softly on the door.

“Go away, please,” Widmarsh called out. “I don’t have time now.”

The doorkeeper seemed to shrink at the rebuke. He took a breath and said, “It’s the police, sir. They’ve come to say goodbye.”

“Oh, very well.”

The doorkeeper opened the door and motioned them inside. “Thank you, sir,” he said to Widmarsh.

“We found some photographs for you,” the Binder said as they came toward him. “And some information on Gwen and Julia, if you need it.” There were two thin folders on his desk now, and he held them out to Caleb. Caleb took them and gave them to Dana.

“Thank you, sir,” Dana said. “But I’m afraid we’re not done here. We’ll need to see the library, for one thing.”

“Absolutely not.”

“That’s where the book was stolen from, right? I’d like to know how they did it.”

“How they did it? Julia wrapped it up in something, her skirt maybe, and walked out with it. We’d trusted her, we’d gotten complacent, and she betrayed us.”

“But why was she allowed in the library in the first place?”

“Because she worked there, of course.”

“I thought she was a cleaner.”

“Yes, a cleaner. And she cleaned the library, among other things.”

“We should take a look anyway --”

“When light fails. No one goes in there except the circle.”

“We can come back with a search warrant, sir,” Dana said.

They wouldn’t get a warrant, though. She would never be able to prove that the library was necessary to their investigation. She’d just said that to annoy him. He’d managed to get to her, finally, one last irritation after a long string of them.

“The library’s protected by law,” Widmarsh said. “The courts agreed that the books belong to us, our intellectual property. Like McDonald’s secret sauce,” he went on, as if they couldn’t understand without an example from their own world. “The way they keep their ingredients hidden from their competitors.”

“It’s Thousand Island dressing,” Caleb said.

“What?” Widmarsh said.

“McDonald’s secret sauce,” Caleb said. “It’s just Thousand Island dressing.”

Widmarsh looked at him with scorn. “One more thing,” he said. “Call me immediately when you find the book. It’s dangerous, like I said. Don’t look inside, don’t even open it. You saw what happened to Julia.”

He took a piece of paper from a drawer, set it on his immaculate desk, and bent to study it. “We’d like to talk to Julia’s friends, sir,” Dana said.

“You’ve caused enough disruption for one day,” Widmarsh said.

“We can’t find Gwen if we aren’t allowed to do our jobs.”

“I can’t deal with any of that now. You’ll have to come back later.”

Dana flipped through the folders. She had dozens more questions, but he had made it clear he wouldn’t answer them. “Well, here’s my card,” she said. He didn’t look up, and she left it on his desk.

The doorkeeper was waiting outside the study. She pushed past him, eager to get away from the dim oppressive house. Her impatience with the circle’s secrecy, their scorn and self-importance, had been growing, and she thought that if she stayed here any longer she would hit someone.

That doorkeeper, for example. Like Caleb he was tall and thin, but he looked as if he’d go over if she stared at him hard.

They came to the front door, and she reached for the bolt. “Oh, no. No, no, no. Wait,” the doorkeeper called out.

“What?” she said.

“Only men are allowed to touch the doors.”

She took a deep breath. We’re almost out of here, she thought. The Lieut wouldn’t like it if I punched him.

The man came forward, pulled back the bolt, and motioned them through. The day had turned sunny, and the air outside felt lighter, freer. There were more cars in the parking lot now, the Medical Examiner’s van and others belonging to Dr. Moncada’s crew.

Suddenly she laughed. “What?” Caleb said.

“Thousand Island dressing,” she said. “What the hell did you say that for?”

He grinned. “I don’t know. Just to -- to annoy him. To see what he’d do.”

“You compared his books to -- to salad dressing...”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

She was still laughing as they drove away.

***********************************************

"I want to read more," Maya says. "That's amazing."

"Very interesting world. And a great cop buddy team," he says. "I must read more of her."

"Oh, I love Goldstein. Star with Tourists. Or Ivory Apples. Or anything, really. She's just amazing. And none of her books are alike," Maya says.

"It's starting to get a little bit dark," he says, stretching. "Shall we do what we did last night and take a couple of books downstairs?"

"Yes, good idea," Maya says. 

He grabs the two books from the top of the pile and they go downstairs. The cat, looking as if he had never been away, appears from the stacks and pads down with them. Maya switches on the green lamp, and they settle themselves in the circle of light.

"Katherine Kerr, Java," he says. "It's the beginning of a novel, but it looks quite thick."

"Great," Maya says.

"That does increase the probability of supper," he agrees. The cat curls up on his lap, and they read.