***Chris Campbell***

A burst of adrenaline allowed Chris to catch the kid’s hand before he got himself killed, forcing it back down to his side.

“Shut your mouth,” he whispered, wrangling the lanky kid down the hall toward the cells.

Once they were away from prying eyes and ears, their conversation covered by the sounds of the office, he asked,“Who was it? Describe him?”

“I don’t wanna sound…bigoted or anything, but you cops all kinda look the same to me. Buzz cut, asshole blush, psycho stare, etc.”

“Asshole blush?”

“Yeah, I had a kid with really bright red cheeks shove a burrito in my face in middle school and ever since then I’ve noticed an alarming relationship between ruddy cheeks and sociopa—”

“Stop screwing around!” Chris said, jostling the kid up a little. “Tell me who it was and why you think so.”

“Kenneth Peterson,” Tom said with a shrug. “Third desk back on the right. He’s got my grampa’s license plate printed out on a sheet of paper and he was flashing it at me. He was also the first responder at Lily’s crash, and has known about the box of gold longer than any single person working here.”

There’s the other connection, Chris thought, eyes widening. It established a motive, seeing as Ken was one of a handful of people who knew the box’s contents before today. Unfortunately, it didn’t explain how Ken could have ghosted through the station.

The IT guys were still scratching their heads on that one.

“What proof do you have?”

“There’ll be cougar claw wounds on his left arm. Maybe more.”

Chris digested that.

“You telling me he was the incompetent gunman at the botched hit at your house, then killed two police officers and perfectly dodged security at the station like Ocean’s fucking Eleven just half an hour later?”

Tom frowned, then nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right. I wouldn’t call him incompetent, though. Nobody expects cougar to the face.”

“That’s wildly improbable.”

“Maybe you guys just aren’t as good at security as you think?” Tom quipped with a shrug.

Chris had to tamp down on his anger. He’d finally gotten the little prick talking. No sense beating him into silence.

“If you’re lying to me, we are going to have a ‘chat’,” Chris said, guiding the young man the rest of the way to his cell.

“By chat you mean beating, right?”

“I don’t appreciate it when people waste my time.”

“I don’t appreciate it when people steal from me. Your people stole from me. Continue to steal from me, actually,” Tom said as the door closed behind him, sealing him into the plain holding cell. “I want my shit back.”

“You’ll get it back when I find the guy who killed Stan and Carlos.”

“I’m not holding my breath,” Tom said, leaning against the bars as Chris strode away.

Jacob The Cokehead gave Chris a familiar wave as he left.

Okay, we need a method to approach Ken. An angle he’s not expecting in order to get the most natural reaction without suspicion.

Chris snorted and shook his head. This investigation is gonna be murder on my wallet.

Chris walked by Ken’s desk, ignoring the up-and-coming detective, heading for his own desk, sitting down and shooting a text off to Debbie Caghue.

Meet in parking lot. – Chris

20 minutes – Debbie

Chris opened up a window on his computer showing Tom and his parents’ profile. He called them ‘Grampa’ and ‘Gramma’, but in the eyes of the law they were technically his parents, having adopted late in life.

When the clock showed it had been nineteen minutes, Chris grabbed a folder and sauntered off to the front door, still ignoring Ken.

He walked over to his car, catching sight of a frizzy-haired officer approaching from his left.

Debbie.

Debbie was an interesting sort. She was widely renowned in the department for being down for practically anything…for the right price. She was pretty, stacked, and half-crazy.

Chris was pretty sure she worked for IA.

“Whaddya need, Campbell?” she asked, chewing gum as loudly as possible.

“I need you to get Ken to take off his shirt without making him suspicious.”

She blinked.

“Is this a prank? Kinda seems inappropriate given the circumstances,” she said, peering up at him. The circumstances being the two officers who were murdered last night.

“Well—”

“Fifty bucks,” she said, holding out her hand.

Chris sighed and shelled out the cash.

******

“You crazy bitch!” Ken shouted, lunging out of his seat and stripping off his shirt, which was covered in scalding hot coffee.

“Oh nooo,” Debbie said, cooing over Ken and dabbing him with a paper towel. “I’m sooo sorry, Ken. I must be coming down with Parkinson’s or something. My grip just isn’t as strong as it used to be.”

The top Debbie’s shirt was unbuttoned, giving the taller officer a pretty spectacular view. The anger seemed to drain out of him as the hypnotic orbs captured his attention.

Chris rubbed his temples.

He’d prioritized immediacy over subtlety when he hired Debbie, and he got what he paid for. Still, most of the other detectives didn’t spare anything but a quiet snort before returning to their work.

Chris sent one glance at Ken’s body, followed by a short double take before burying his nose back in his work.

Nothing.

Not a single wound.

Goddamn it, I’m out fifty bucks and that kid in there is probably laughing his head off. Well, if he wants to fuck with me, he’s about to get more than he asked for. Chris turned his attention toward filling out the paperwork for charging Tom with Aggravated Discharge and everything else he could throw at the kid for being a cocky little prick.

“Get off!” Ken said, snapping out of his cleavage-induced stupor. “I’ve got spare clothes in my car.” He slung his dirty clothes over his shoulder and marched out of the precinct in his tighty-whities.

Catcalls and hooting followed Ken out the front door. Less than there would have normally been given the morose atmosphere, which seemed to liven up just a little at Ken’s humiliation.

At least it was worth something, Chris thought, walking past Ken’s desk on the way to wave criminal charges under the kid’s nose.

In Ken’s trash, there was a crumpled sheet of paper. It seemed like there was something printed on it in a huge font.

Chris faked a sneeze, dipped down and snagged the paper without missing a step, shoving it in his pocket.

Chris slipped into the men’s room and entered a stall before uncrumpling the sheet of paper.

It was a license plate.

In less than a minute, Chris had confirmed that yes, it was Tom Grave’s father’s car, and there was a BOLO as of this morning. If it was to debrief William Graves about his son’s girlfriend and whether or not any suspicious types were after her gold, that was all well and good. A necessary step, even.

The weird part was the fact the license plate was printed in huge letters on a sheet of paper.

At no point was that necessary, unless you wanted to show someone a license plate number from across the room.

***Tom Graves***

It would have been really nice if I could have worked the magic angle, Tom thought to himself. The biggest problem was, he could only tell these people half the truth, because they would immediately dismiss him as a crackpot.

On the other hand, if they believed him, they’d probably confiscate his mojo.

There were very few ways this could turn out well.

And I’m still on a fucking deadline. In a month, he needed enough Soul Pulses to not default on his loans and get straight-up murdered.

To that end, he’d linked his familiar to the soul engine and hidden Suzie in the middle of the UIC medical center. The frog demon had then blended seamlessly in with her surroundings, so seamlessly that someone would have to use photographic evidence to determine where she was.

Bored. She noticed him thinking about her and beamed her emotions back at him, the emotional equivalent of twiddling her thumbs.

You and me both.

It was agonizing being this stressed out and completely unable to do anything about it. Tom slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, thinking of all the ways his soul engine could vanish out of the cops hands.

“It’s cool,” Jacob said from across the cell. “We’ll be out of here in a few hours.”

“Let me guess. You’ve done this before.”

“A…few times.”

“Man, if I had real powers, this wouldn’t be a freakin’ problem,” Tom said, clenching his fingers around an imaginary throat.

“Eh, you do what you can,” Jacob said with a shrug before lying down on the floor, his hoodie under his head. “In the meantime, might as well get some sleep.”

“Tom Graves,” the older detective said, motioning him forward.

“Yeah?”

“There’s no wounds on Ken, cougar or otherwise. Would you care to revise your statement accusing my fellow officer of murder?”

“…Uh, what?” Tom blinked. He hadn’t seen the man’s face because he’d been wearing a balaclava, but he was very sure it had been Ken. The guy was carrying a ghostwalk Crypt. The guy had magically slipped through a car door to get away from his cougar, for chrissakes.

It was as bad as showing his face.

And Tom had clearly seen the cougar’s claws tear themselves out of the man’s arm as he drove away.

What the hell?

“I said,” the detective said, leaning closer, “you’re a liar. There’s obviously something strange going on between you and Ken, and until I get to the bottom of it, consider yourself a suspect in the deaths of Stan Smith and Carlos Hernandez.

“I can tell you one thing,” the older man continued. “You’re sure as hell not getting out of here in forty-eight hours.”

Tom’s heart sank into his guts, his legs trembling from an unhealthy mix of fear, anger and frustration.

“Can I get the receipt?” Jacob asked into the gulf of silence between the two of them.

“What?” The old detective’s gaze locked in on Jacob, whose fingers were laced across his chest.

“The receipt for all the shit in my truck,” Jacob said, eyes still closed. “If we’re under arrest and my stuff is actually confiscated, you gotta give me a receipt. There’s a lot of valuable shit in that truck.”

“This isn’t your first rodeo, is it, young man?” the detective asked, giving Jacob an appraising look.

“Nosir,” Jacob said, eyes still closed.

“I’ll have a uniform bring it in later,” the old detective said before leaving.

“Get some sleep,” Jacob said, yawning.

That sounds good, actually, Tom thought, slumping against the far wall, away from the bars. If Ken tried to kill them, it would be at night, so they might as well get some sleep now.

Tom’s eyelids drifted shut as he forced himself to sleep.

***DREAM***

SLAM!

Tom lurched in place as a binder slammed down in front of him.

Huh. Guess the nap in the interrogation room was enough to reset what constitutes ‘yesterday’.

“What do you know about gold?” the detective asked, laying a picture of the soul engine down, peering at him for a moment before he collapsed into his seat.

Tom felt a tearing sensation as he deviated from yesterday’s course of events, staring down at the picture of the object that his life literally depended on.

Tom thought good and hard about morality and Grampa’s lessons about the nature of a good man. Unfortunately, Tom’s back was up against the wall.

His enemy was probably going to ghost into the cell and strangle him in his sleep, the object that would prevent the repossession of his soul was under lock and key, and there was a psycho cop unsubtly threatening his family.

Tom didn’t have the luxury of morals.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Tom apologized, leaping over the table and slamming his knee into the older man’s nose.