Thunderbird Falls

I waved at her through the restaurant window and grinned my way up the street. A long-nosed bicycle messenger zipped past me, illegally riding on the sidewalk. I barked, “Hey!” He shot a nasty glance over his shoulder at me and didn’t stop. At the corner, he bounced his bike off the curb and down into the street, careening across the avenue to ride on the correct, if not right, side. Rather than chase him down on foot, I punched 411 on my generally despised department-issued cell phone and got the number for the company he worked for. It took the length of waiting for one stoplight to register a request for disciplinary action. I crossed the street with the rest of the herd cheerfully. If I was lucky, I’d see his bike ahead of me and get to ticket it for vehicular misuse.

It was a sad, sad state when I was glad about carrying a cell phone and considered the opportunity to ticket a bicycle to be good luck.

Bells on a shop door behind me chimed urgently as someone pushed and held it open. “Excuse me. Officer Walker?”

I blinked over my shoulder. A girl of about twenty leaned in the door, vibrating it enough to keep the bells ringing. “Er, yeah? I mean, yes?”

Relief brightened her face. “Oh good. I had a premonition, you see, a dream about you, but I wasn’t sure if Walker was your last name or if it was just that you were a walker.” She gestured at me. “Foot patrol, see?”

I backed up a step and glanced at the name above the shop. It did not, as I half expected it to, say Lunatics “R” Us. Actually, it bore the innocuous name of East Asian Imports, although the girl whose leaning continued to jangle the bells was about as East Asian as Queen Elizabeth. She was blond and on the slightly chunky side of curvy, with brown eyes and a hopeful expression. For an unkind moment I thought of golden retrievers. “What can I do for you, miss?”

“My name’s Faye.” The door bells quivered with excitement. “I need your help.”

Fishwire tightened around my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “My help specifically, or the police in general?” Adrenaline made the tips of my fingers cold and tingly and slid the world into sharper focus. Given Faye’s opening statement about dreams, I wasn’t surprised when she said—

“Yours specifically. See, a friend of mine died yesterday, and I dreamed about you—”

Adrenaline abandoned my fingertips to turn into a festering pit of nausea in my belly. “Who was your friend?”

Tears welled in Faye’s eyes. “Her name was Cassie. Nobody even knows what happened yet.” She narrowly escaped wailing, mouth turned down in misery. “She couldn’t just die like that, could she? She was only twenty, and she couldn’t just die!” The bells shivered and banged and rang. I set my teeth together and stepped forward, not quite touching Faye’s elbow.

“How about if we go inside for a minute?” Because if we didn’t, I was going to shoot the bells right off the door. Faye sniffled miserably and backed into the store. It was poorly lit after the brilliant morning sunshine. I tripped over a solemn wooden monkey carved out of dark wood that sat precariously near the door. It wobbled ponderously. I slapped my hand on its flat head—maybe it was a plant stand—and left it complacently back in its place as I edged farther into the store.

“It’s okay.” Faye snuffled and wiped her hand under her nose, which would have been considerably more endearing if she’d been three. “Everybody does that.”

“Why don’t you move it, then?”

“He likes to be able to see out the door.”

I consider it a matter of great pride that I didn’t abandon the store right there. I paused, gathered up the several things I wanted to say, admired them briefly, then moved on as manfully as I could. “Ms.—” She hadn’t given me her last name. “Faye,” I said somewhat reluctantly, not wanting at all to get personal with the girl. “If you know something about Cassandra Tucker’s death, you should be talking with UW police, not with me.”

Faye’s gaze snapped to me, her big brown eyes seeming much less golden-retriever-like suddenly. “I didn’t mention Cassie’s last name.”

Crap. “No, you didn’t, but police departments do talk to one another.” I really didn’t want to confess to being the one who found her friend’s body. It seemed likely that it would get messy after that, and she was already snorfling all over the place. I made a slow circuit of the store, wedging myself between narrowly placed shelves and trying not to knock any more bric-a-brac over. I wondered if the place was up to fire code.

Faye, evidently mollified, kept pace with me on the other side of the skinny shelving unit. It, like the monkey, was carved of some kind of dark wood, and a price tag was wrapped around one of the supports. I wondered what would happen to all the stuff it held if someone saw fit to buy it. “I dreamed that you could help us,” she said.

“Us?” I picked the lid off a small pot and peered inside. Black enamel paint gleamed at me. Faye looked uncomfortable.

“Me and some friends. Friends of Cassie’s.”

I set the lid back on the pot with a distinctive click, remembered Morrison’s magnificent scowl, and said without a trace of guilt, “Cassandra’s death isn’t my jurisdiction, Faye. I’m very sorry, but my captain would hang me by my toes to dry if I got involved. The best I can do is offer to bring you down to the Udub police so you can talk to them, and I can’t really even do that until my lunch break.” I twisted my arm, peering at my watch, a big black clunker of a thing that no longer told me what time it was in Moscow. “Which is in about three hours. Want me to come back then?” Maybe a little twinge of guilt.

“I dreamed you had darkness wrapped around your heart and that light shone through it so powerfully it cracked and shattered letting goodness into the world and the goodness said to me that your name was Walker and that without you all hope was lost and that I had to wait and watch today so that I could stop you and ask you to help and I didn’t know if I would even know you because all I really saw in the dream was a woman with a walking stick but as soon as I saw you I knew you were the one from the dream because you’re confident and strong and you move like the woman in the dream and anybody with eyes to see can tell that you’ve got power so please won’t you help us?” Faye clutched the corner of the shelves, staring up at me as she dragged in a deep breath. I gaped at her.

Rationally, not one of the things she said should have swayed me. Hell, not all of the things she said should have swayed me, not even with the breathless, desperate delivery. I snapped, “All right,” and shoved my hand through my hair. “Dammit.”

Faye’s eyes widened. Maybe good police officers didn’t say “dammit.” I’d have to check the handbook. Meantime, I said, “Dammit,” again for good measure, and raked my hand through my hair again. “All right, look, Faye. What’s your last name?”

“Kirkland. Why?”

So I can look up your police records. “I like to know people’s names when I agree to get in over my head. Look. I will come talk to you and your friends, all right?” My speech was getting more precise, indicating to me, if not to Faye, who, after all, didn’t know me very well, that I really meant what I was saying. “However, I want you to promise me that if, after speaking with you, I believe that what you have to say might be of use to the university police department, you and your friends will come with me to talk to them. Do we have a deal?” The last words were so clipped that Faye’s eyes widened again.

“Okay. Honest, I don’t think it’ll be any help, but if we are, yes, okay, I promise.” Swear to God, if she’d had a tail she would’ve wagged it. I dropped my chin to my chest.

“All right. All right, fine. Dammit,” I added again for good measure. “Where should I meet you?”

“We’ll be at the reading room for the graduate library on campus at seven tonight. Can you come then?”

I stood up. “I don’t get off work until seven. Is it okay if I’m late?”

Faye nodded, backing up so she could abandon the narrow shelving area for the slightly roomier front counter. “It’ll be fine. Maybe you shouldn’t come in uniform.” She gave me a critical sideways glance that took the wind right out of the She Who Was Not To Be Messed With mindset.

“Maybe I should,” I said. “It might make people more willing to talk to the university police, if I’m not scary.”

Faye eyed me dubiously. “If you think so,” she said with such exaggerated politeness that I knew I’d be succumbing to peer pressure. I closed my eyes momentarily and scolded myself for being a weenie, then put on a fake smile.

“Or not. Okay. I’ll see you tonight, then.”

Faye beamed, tongue lolling out just like a retriever’s. Well, no, but boy, she looked happy. “Thank you, Officer Walker. We’ll see you tonight.”

“It’s Joanne,” I said, resigned, and let myself out to the jangling of bells. Morrison was going to kill me.

CHAPTER NINE

Friday, June 17, 5:15 p.m.

I rapped twice on Morrison’s door frame, cautious taps, and said, “Captain?” before screwing my face up in a wince. Knocking was about the sum total of politeness Morrison could typically expect from me. Bringing his title into the conversation before it even began gave him warning to be wary.

And the look he gave me as he glanced up from paperwork was, indeed, wary. “What do you want?”

I sighed and hunched my way into his office even though there’d been no invitation issued. “I am not investigating Cassandra Tucker’s death,” I offered as my initial foray. Morrison’s eyebrows beetled down. “But I was wondering if we knew anything else about it yet.” I set my teeth together in a grimace and added, “A friend of hers approached me today.”

“Approached you.” Morrison got up from his desk and walked around me, closing the door with a final-sounding click. I watched him over my shoulder as he stood there with his mouth held in a thick purse, then jerked my gaze forward again as he turned back around. “Sit,” he said from behind me, and I did as he went back to his desk. “Approached you,” he repeated.

I sank down into the chair and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, speaking into the cover my palms made. “While I was on patrol. She said…” I trailed off long enough to sigh, then lifted my eyebrows over the protective steepling of my fingers, eyes still closed. “She said she’d had a dream about me and she was waiting for me. She wanted me to meet some of Cassandra’s friends tonight.”

“A dream.” Morrison’s voice sounded exactly like mine would have in his position: exasperated, frustrated, and annoyed. I felt sorry for him. I’d have felt sorry for myself, too, except world-weary resignation seemed to have overcome the self-pity. Morrison dragged in a deep breath and said, “You’re telling me this because…?”

I dropped my fingers to look at him. “Because you told me specifically to stay away from this case, and whether you believe it or not, I’m actually trying to follow orders. Except the case may not want to stay away from me.”

“A case,” Morrison said through his teeth, “is not something that makes choices about who it’s assigned to, Walker.”

“No, sir, not normally.” I’d spent the better part of the day since encountering Faye trying to find a way around having this conversation with Morrison. The only alternatives I could come up with were considerably worse than having it. Somehow the inevitability made me less antagonistic than I usually would have been. “But under the circumstances, I don’t really think it’s coincidence that this girl came to me.”

“Under what circumstances?”

I turned my hands palm-up, a shrug, and said, “Me.”

Tension spilled through Morrison’s expression, aging him years in a few seconds. I looked away, uncomfortable with seeing him look so defeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, but we both knew the growl in his voice was only for show. I pressed my lips together, daring to glance back at him, but only for a moment. He still looked aged and unhappy.

“It means something’s wrong with Cassandra Tucker’s death, sir.” I really didn’t want to say I think magic may have been involved, sir, and I was pretty sure Morrison didn’t want me to say it, either.

He didn’t let the possibility of clarification linger on the air, snapping, “Of course something’s wrong. She was twenty years old and ended up dead in a locker room. There’s nothing right about it.”

“That’s not what I mean, Captain.” I didn’t want to push it any more than that, but I felt like I had to at least say that much. “I’d like your permission to go talk to her friends.”

He gave me a baleful glare. “Are you going to do it anyway?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, “but at least I’m trying to be above-board here, Morrison. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

He sighed explosively. “They’re doing an autopsy. It’s being investigated as a homicide. Right now that’s all I know.” He clenched his jaw, muscle working. “Get back to me if you learn anything.”

I said, “Yes, sir,” and got the hell out of his office before we were forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Friday, June 17, 7:25 p.m.

The graduate library’s reading room was dim and dark, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that the dimness came not from clouds overhead, but from smoky torches that couldn’t possibly meet fire code. I hung in the doorway, squinting into smoke and trying to get the lay of the land before anyone noticed me, but Faye clapped her hands, letting out a squeal of delight. “You came! I knew you’d come! This is Joanne Walker, everyone. She’s the one I dreamed about.” Her voice lowered portentously with the last several words, but I was the only one who seemed to notice.

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