Precinct 13 by Tate Hallaway

Author:Tate Hallaway [Hallaway, Tate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101581285
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-07T07:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

My assistant was a lot more frazzled than the last time I saw her. Gone were the Isabel Toledo shoes, the Vera Wang dress, and the matching high-class attitude. She met me at the door with a horrified, “Help me!” expression. Her polished nails dug into my sweater painfully as she dragged me into the room. “They had to put it on the floor! With a forklift! It has no goddamn face, for fucksake.”

“I know,” I said. To her credit, my assistant seemed to have had the presence of mind to spread a tarp out on the floor upon which the cow now rested. She had also piled heaps of ice around the carcass. “This is good.” I indicated all she’d done—or, more likely, gotten someone else to do. “Thank you. But what were you doing here?”

“I work here,” she said, her voice confused, but clearly affronted.

“All of a sudden? You couldn’t be bothered when I checked in Mrs. Finnegan and…” I’d gotten out of the habit of referring to the other body as anything other than the necromancer. “…everything else. Why did you come in today?”

She tried to keep up the offended look, but it faltered around the edges as she groped for an answer. “It’s…the second Tuesday of the month. I always come in then.”

“Even when we’re not expecting anybody?”

“I…come in to do routine paperwork,” she said.

“The main office is upstairs,” I noted.

“Yes, that’s where I was, until the call about the delivery came in,” she said. I might have been convinced she was telling the truth, except for her nervous glance at my corner desk. Following her gaze, I noticed the computer was on and opened to my autopsy report on the necromancer.

I stalked over to the desk. With a punch of my fingers, I closed down the document. Thank God it had been the one for the upstairs office, not Precinct 13. “You were spying on me!”

She drew herself up and glared at me over the body of the cow. “So what if I was. I’d heard they brought a guy in who had poisoned himself, but I can’t find his body anywhere. What did you do with it?”

“Me? I—” I started to sputter out a defensive response, but stopped myself. I didn’t need to explain myself to her. The chief of police himself was the one who’d sent me to Precinct 13. He knew we had a missing body. If she was snooping, it wasn’t for him. “Are you still working for my predecessor?”

Her face turned bright red, but she said, “I’m employed by the county.”

“Officially. What about unofficially?” I asked, though I didn’t really need to hear her answer to know the truth. It seemed pretty clear. Still, she’d taken good care of the carcass. I pulled a pair of gloves from the box on my desk. “Listen, I’m ready to fire you on the spot. If you want to work for me, you could do me one more favor. Find me the name of a good veterinarian.

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