Charisma by Orania Papazoglou Page A

riding a desk, or got irritated by the constraints of it. He thought it was a nice way to go on working without getting shot. Not getting shot was just fine with him. He’d been shot a couple of times, and shot at a couple of dozen more. He hadn’t liked any of it at all. Still, there were times he got tired of the bureaucratic pace of it. This was one of them. The shorter stack would be full of information about the progress of the Billy Hare case. It would say what he expected it to say, which would depress him beyond reason. He didn’t care how many front-page stories they printed in the Register. He’d seen cases like this before. They were unsolvable, but they were impossible to process. The chances that he’d ever have what he needed to arrest somebody were practically nil.
    Although he wished they weren’t.
    He really wished they weren’t.
    The upper-left-hand corner of his desk contained one file folder, marked CAVELLO/DAMIEN HOUSE in royal blue Flair across its broad front flat. It was marked with ordinary police code on its tab, but he didn’t pay any attention to that. He pulled it to him and opened it. There were witness statements. There were reports from the two patrolmen first on the scene. There were photographs. There was even a computer printout nearly an inch thick, containing the raw data the Mobile Crime Unit had collected to write its reports with. What there wasn’t was a report from the morgue.
    Pat closed the file and tapped his hands against it, distracted. Then he punched his intercom and said, “Andrea? Are you there?”
    “My God,” Andrea said. “You’re in. I didn’t see you come in. When did you come in?”
    “About a minute ago. You must have been in the john.”
    “I don’t go to the john. I was just about to bring in more messages.”
    “Important?”
    “Crap.”
    “Keep them for a while. Who do we have on the Cavello/Damien House?”
    There was a rustle of paper, Andrea going through the duty book. “Markham and Halt,” she said finally. “I think they’re down in the pen.”
    “Did you tell them I wanted a morgue report?”
    “Of course I did. I even talked to them myself.”
    “Did you tell them I wanted a back check?”
    “I just told you I—”
    “I know, I know,” Pat closed his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring up the faces of Markham and Halt. That meant they weren’t very good or very bad. He knew all the good ones by name, and he thought he had enough on the bad ones to keep them in line. It was just too bad he wasn’t political. If he had been, he could have had the bad ones transferred out. He thought about Dbro and shook his head.
    On the other end of the line, Andrea was getting restless. “Pat?” she said.
    “I’m still here,” he said. “I’m just trying to think of what to do.”
    “I’ll get Markham and Halt up here for you if you want.”
    “Maybe that would be a good idea.” No it wouldn’t. He sighed. “Never mind. Did anybody tell you anything about this thing? About Cavello?”
    “Was there something they shouldn’t have told me?”
    “No.”
    “The word around here is that she was marked. Not just cut but marked. With some kind of Devil worship symbol or something.”
    Pat looked at the statue on his desk—a six-inch-high porcelain of Saint Michael the Archangel, patron of policemen, sent to him by his sister the nun—and stifled a laugh. “Well,” he said, “she was marked with something. Are you sure Markham and Halt are in the pen?”
    “They were the last time I looked.”
    “What about Anton Klemmer? Is he on duty today?”
    “Anton Klemmer is always on duty. He sleeps in one of his cold drawers.”
    “He sleeps with his children’s nanny. She’s twenty-two years old and from Sweden. Call Anton and tell him I’m coming down. I want to talk to him.”
    “All right.”
    “Call Markham and Halt and tell them to meet me there?”
    “All right again.” A pause. A cough. A paper