Ghost of a Chance

Shaking his head, Alex stood, forcing the morbid thoughts from his brain. Someone had given Duane King over a grand’s worth of runes without asking anything in return. That wasn’t right. Sam Enderby obviously had some bigger game in mind, but what?

Alex picked up his kit and left the interrogation room. It was time to call Iggy.

“I just got done at the Central Office,” Alex said once Iggy picked up the phone.

“Did you find out anything about our glyph rune cousins?”

“Just that they’re probably actual descendants of the Maya,” Alex said. “Jimmy called them the Talons, like they were some kind of organized group.”

“That might explain why we’ve never heard of them,” Iggy said. “If they’re a small group, it’d be easy for them to stay secret. Did Jimmy say anything about the entropy stone?”

“He clammed up hard when I mentioned it,” Alex said. “He didn’t even like me knowing the name.”

Iggy laughed at that.

“I think we should look into it, then,” Iggy said. “Did you talk to the curator over at the museum?”

“I did,” Alex said. “He wasn’t thrilled, but since he owes me one, he said we can look around after closing time. Meet me there at seven and we’ll go over the place.”

“Will do,” Iggy said. “What about Duane King?”

Alex filled Iggy in on his conversation with the former ghost, leaving out the bit about his life rune symptoms.

“You’re right,” Iggy agreed once Alex was done. “I don’t like this Enderby fellow. The only reason he would have to set King up with all those runes was if he wanted something out of the deal.”

“Maybe he hated one of the people King wanted to kill?” Alex suggested.

“No, he didn’t know who was involved in North Shore Development until after he got that job in the Hall of Records.”

“Maybe he was testing that anchor rune through the mail trick.”

“That’s a possibility,” Iggy said. “Though it seems like an awfully expensive test.”

“Well, I’ll think about it some more,” Alex said.

“Yes, and we’ll need to find out everything we can about Sam Enderby and why he was in prison,” Iggy added.

“I’ve got to get going,” Alex said, checking his pocket watch.

“What are you going to do until the museum closes?”

“I’ve got three family heirlooms to track down with my finding rune,” Alex answered. “Then I have to see a woman about tailing her cheating husband.”

Iggy laughed at that.

“Just don’t be late,” he said.

31 The Hieroglyph

Alex spent the rest of the afternoon working through Leslie’s stack of potential clients. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it was work and if it kept up like this, they’d have next month covered in a week or two.

By five o’clock, Alex closed the office and took the crawler across town to the Waldorf hotel. Anne Watson didn’t look much better when she let him into her suite. She listened patiently as he told the story of Duane King and her husband’s involvement in North Shore Development.

“Thank you, Alex,” she said when he finished.

Alex could see that the knowledge of what her husband had done, even though it was decades ago, weighed on her like a millstone.

“Do you think the police have enough evidence to convict the man who killed David?” she asked.

“They do,” Alex assured her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as if she bore some responsibility for what had happened years before she’d even met her husband.

She paid Alex and wished him well, but it was clear that she just wanted Alex to go and hopefully take the pain of her husband’s past with him.

Alex thanked her and left. He wanted to say something to help, but there really wasn’t anything he could say.

* * *

Alex puffed on a cigarette as he rode a crawler along Central Park North to the station near Dr. Kellin’s shop. It had been a good day, and he hoped it was about to get better.

“What are you doing here?” Jessica asked when she answered the back door to the lab.

“I wanted to apologize again for cutting our date short,” Alex said.

Jessica leaned against the door jamb, crossing her arms with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay,” she said, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips. “Let’s hear it.”

Alex suppressed a smile of his own. Jessica wanted her pound of flesh for ditching her to solve his case. Still, if she wasn’t willing to forgive him, she would have slammed the door in his face.

He told her about the museum heist and Andrew Barton’s traction motor, then about Duane King and the ghost murders.

“I read about those in the papers this morning,” she said. “They didn’t mention you.”

Alex explained about Billy Tasker and his deal with the reporter.

“How modest of you,” she said.

Alex wasn’t sure if she believed him or not. Jessica had a great poker face.

She had great everything.

“So,” she said, her barely-visible smile shifting to a mocking one. “How will you ever make it up to me?”

Alex found himself grinning this time. He’d anticipated that question and he had a damn good answer.