Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Not fifty yards away, I’d shot Annemarie Marceaux to death. They’d washed away the blood and the chalk outline from the Internal Affairs investigation, but the memory was as strong as ever. I swore I could still smell the gunpowder from my .38 revolver, hear the hollow boom of my holdout weapon, my last resort after Annemarie took my Sig.

“Spooky down here,” Pete commented. “I’d rather walk aboveground, even when the weather is crap.”

“You aren’t the only one,” I murmured, breathing again, finally, as we climbed the stairs to the emergency entrance in the morgue.

Annemarie’s ghost stayed where it was, just breathing a cold sigh onto the back of my neck as the door swung shut. If I believed in ghosts. These days, I tried as hard as I could not to.

Pete and I rode the elevator to the ID division, which handled fingerprinting and dental identifications as well as ID fraud. A guy with a bushy Moses beard hiding a young face jumped up and pumped Pete’s hand. “How the hell are you, Anderson?”

“Fine, fine,” Pete said. “CSU keeps me busy.”

The tech grinned approvingly. “You look slick, Anderson. What brings you back here to slum with the lab rats?”

Pete jerked his thumb at me. “She does. This is Lieutenant Wilder.”

The tech eyed me. “We’ve met.”

I checked his nametag, since he didn’t sound happy. His badge read D. Dellarocco. Oh, shit. I remembered the guy, and I’d been rude to him the single time we’d met. Maybe I could blame it on bad shellfish …

“Hi,” I said with a large smile. Dellarocco crossed his arms.

“What can I help you with, ma’am? Or do you just want to yell and threaten me again?”

People were looking now, techs turning away from their light tables and their AFIS computers to watch. I felt my cheeks turning pink. “Listen,” I said to Dellarocco, low, “you don’t be a dick and make a big deal out of this and I will apologize by buying you and Pete a very, very good meal at some future date. Deal?”

Dellarocco pursed his lips and considered for a whole two seconds. When it comes to lab geeks and free food, food wins every time. “Fine, deal. What’ve you got for me?”

I handed over Lily’s ID. “Fake license for a fourteen-year-old murder victim. I need to know who made it.”

Dellarocco took it and whistled. “Nice work. Usually the fakes have frayed edges and a grainy scan of the state seal under some shitty Photoshopping. This was professionally laminated.”

He rolled a stool over to a tubular light and flicked it on. “You see the hologram? It’s old. They changed it to the state seal surrounded by the state motto a few years ago, and this license is brand new. So they not only have a laminating machine, they got their hands on surplus equipment from the Department of Licensing, which is theoretically destroyed when it becomes obsolete. The felonies are racking up.” Dellarocco sounded pleased.

“Okay, so any idea who made this with their fancy machines?” I said.

“Hmm,” said Dellarocco. “Something this state-of-the-art is usually organized crime. The Chinese are big into fake IDs for the workers the snakeheads bring over, and the various other mobs—Vietnamese, Russian, the Colombians … it’s a profitable sideline for them.”

“If I’m a poor little rich girl,” I said, “where am I gonna go to get a decent ID?”

Dellarocco spread his hands. “Guys who sell IDs usually hang out at clubs, troll on college campuses. The pro outfits use stringers to insulate themselves from the cops.”

“Like drug dealers,” Pete said.

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Dellarocco. “A fake ID that will pass muster can be worth two or three grand to the right customer. Five times that for a fake passport, especially after 9/11.”

“Can you put together a list of names and email it to my desk?” I asked. “Your usual suspects?”

Dellarocco cocked his eyebrow. “You buy us food and a round of beers.”

Demanding little nerd. “Done. Soon as you can.”

Dellarocco threw me a salute and rolled over to his computer, pulling up the department database.

“Now what?” Pete said.

I sighed. “Now I go home, put on a skimpy outfit and drag my boyfriend out to a titty bar.”

“Damn, LT.” Pete whistled. “Your home life is sure different from mine. I’m lucky if we get to cuddle on the couch while the lady watches her CSI. ”

“She makes you watch CSI?”

“Yeah.” Pete grimaced. “I got in trouble for yelling at the TV.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Good luck, Pete. Don’t wake your neighbors.”

“Sometimes I wish I were still a geek with no social life,” he muttered before we parted.

Sometimes I wished I were still an overworked homicide detective, hiding the fact that I was a were from everyone except my old lieutenant. Things seemed easier back then, even though my personal life was in the toilet and I lived in constant fear of exposure.

We don’t always get what we want. I’d lost my anonymity but I’d gotten Will, and I’d done something to actually help my city by heading up the SCS.

At least, that was what I told myself as I drove home.

My apartment was in an old building at the edge of Waterfront, the neighborhood bad enough to be cheap and good enough that me being a cop kept the worst of the street kids and home-grown pot dealers out of my immediate eyeline. I used to have a cottage—secluded, run-down and homey, but the Thelemites had burned it down in an attempt to burn me right along with it.

The apartment wasn’t ideal for when the phase came—if I broke out of my self-imposed cage, which was currently taking up most of the closet space in my handkerchief-sized bedroom, it would be a straight shot through the flimsy wall into my next-door neighbor’s apartment.

Running through my workout with the heavy bag in the corner of my living room, I tried to clear my mind of the day’s unpleasantness. I