I asked him what would happen to Suzy.
He said, “She’ll be detained.”
Fritz had no offers of leniency for Suzy, no laments about what a trustworthy agent she was and how much he would miss her. Just a stony glare and a comforting pat on my back.
“I don’t think Suzy’s guilty,” I said.
How could I explain that Erin’s ghost had told me I was the murderer? The dead couldn’t lie. Suzy couldn’t be guilty. But I couldn’t say any of that without giving Isobel away, and it wouldn’t explain how Suzy’s Glock had killed the waitress.
“Take the afternoon to relax,” Fritz said, handing a security badge to the Magical Violations building to me. It had my picture on it and no other information. “I look forward to seeing you at the office tomorrow.”
We’d arrived at my apartment complex.
I stepped out. The SUVs left.#p#分页标题#e#
And then I was alone.
My home was totally clean now. Erin’s blood had been scrubbed out of the carpet, and the smell of cleaning fluid lingered in the air. My DVDs were intact. Someone had removed my broken appliances. All my potions and poultices were gone. Aside from that, it looked normal.
It didn’t feel like I belonged there.
And I definitely didn’t want to go anywhere near my bathroom.
Instead, I grabbed Domingo’s Charger from the parking lot near Helltown and went for a drive.
Isobel’s RV wasn’t where she had left it. All I found was a drying stain where her septic system had been drained and tire tracks.
She was gone.
I sat behind the wheel of the Charger for a good twenty minutes, thinking back on our last phone call, the way it had cut off. She’d probably been using a cheap burner phone, since a nomad without a job could hardly get a contract with a major carrier. No surprise that there’d been bad reception. The fact that she was gone probably didn’t mean she was in trouble—just that she’d moved on the way she always had. Off to find another source of income.
Not a big deal. That was her modus operandi. Always on the move. Shouldn’t take it personally.
But I did.
Hey, she’d been the one to kiss me, even when she thought I’d killed Erin. Couldn’t blame me for thinking she might be interested in seeing me again now that I was, apparently, an innocent man.
Whatever.
Fritz had told me to take the afternoon off, but I couldn’t imagine returning to my apartment. It was still early in the day, not even noon.
I turned on the Charger and drove to my first day of work since Erin Karwell’s death.
I had the security badge Fritz had given me, but when I walked up to the monolithic white building of the Magical Violations Department, I didn’t really expect it to work. It felt like everyone was staring at me as I walked through the OPA campus, accusing me of murder with their glares—or worse, of betraying Suzy.
No way they’d let me in. Not after the sins I’d committed.
But the card reader flashed green when I waved the badge over it. The door unlocked. I stepped inside, and nobody stopped me.
My desk was in cubeville on the third floor. The exterior walls were giant windows looking out over the campus. Within those windows, everything was surrounded by boring gray half walls. No privacy for the witches working in Magical Violations.
Conversations stopped and heads turned as I headed for my desk by the north windows.
I sat down at my desk to find that all of my belongings had been cleared from the surface—not just mine, but Suzy’s, too. Every last scrap of it. Her cup of pens. Her computer monitor. The pink and yellow sticky notes we had been using to leave obscene jokes for each other. The three little ceramic cats she used to keep next to the stapler.
It looked so empty.
Aniruddha stopped by, tapping a knuckle on my desk. “Hey, Hawke. You’ve probably noticed something’s missing.”
My eyes were drawn to Suzy’s chair, pushed into the corner with nobody sitting in it.
“A few things are missing, yeah,” I said.
“All of your personal effects and work computer were taken down to processing,” Aniruddha said. “Friederling has requested that everything be returned to you as soon as possible. Luckily your effects didn’t get taken to the warehouse yet, but it’s still going to take a couple hours to find everything. You’ll be back to normal by tomorrow morning.”
Normal. Right.
“Thanks, man,” I said.
He glanced at the empty chair, too. “Never would have believed it. Didn’t believe it when they said it was you, either.”
“Thanks,” I said again because I didn’t know what else to say.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to get any work done until your computer is back. You should go for a walk. Get something to eat. Go home.” He shrugged. “Up to you.”