Then again, police work isn’t, strictly speaking, good for anyone. Eating your Glock, ulcers, cynicism, depression—the list goes on and on. I took a deep breath. Hunting wasn’t good either, but at least a hunter could take the edge off with sex or some hard sparring. “Huh. Maybe they’re related?”

Monty’s office seemed too small to contain his rage. Not at me, thank God. He stalked behind his desk and dropped into his chair, almost disappearing behind the flood of paper files and assorted other crap. “Go talk to them, look over their files. We’ll pick up this doctor, Kricky—”

“Kricekwesz. Polish, I think.” Like it matters.

Monty rubbed at his eyes. “Whatever the fuck his name is. We’ll pick him up. Though if whoever this is decides to take out some more scumbags like Rocadero I might throw a fucking parade.”

“For cleaning the streets of pregnant hookers too?” My tone was harder than it needed to be. But goddammit, everyone was forgetting the victims here, the girls that walked the streets, the girls who had been abandoned too many times already.

Don’t get up on your high horse, Kismet. You did it too. They’re less than human because they’re still in the life. On the street. Swallowing God-knows-what and doing what nobody wants to talk about, and turning over a cut of their pay to the professional pimp or the dealer or the man who “loves” them. Christ. Even I look down on them.

And I should know better.

Monty’s silence warned me. I dropped my eyes to the tough short russet carpet of his office. Outside the door, Saul waited. Perry was in a limousine circling the block. I was alone in here with Montaigne, who was a good cop—and even more important, a friend. He’d never let me down.

“I’m sorry, Jill,” he said finally. “You know it ain’t that way.”

Carp and Rosie cared about every body they came across; even the pimps and the hookers and the drug lords. There is something so unutterably final about death, some robbing of human dignity from every corpse, even the ones that die naturally. And Montaigne cared too. Even the impossible cases, where the perp was never found, he and his detectives circled like a tongue circles a sore tooth, unable to forget.

“I know it isn’t. I’m just fucking frustrated.” This is getting to me far more than it should. I blew out a long breath between my teeth. “I’m sorry, Monty. Really.”

“You’re gettin’ punchy.” Bitchy was the word he wanted to use, I guessed, and I was grateful he hadn’t. “When this is over, you wanna take some time off? I guess we can keep everything under control for a little while. Mebbe.”

Oh, Monty. The fact that he had brushed the nightside once and knew a little bit about it made the offer that much braver. “I’m planning on it.” I stretched, my bones still aching and tender from the demands the staff had made on my body, demands engineered to keep me alive. “I’m sorry, Monty. I’m sorry as shit. I should have thought of the organ thing sooner.”

He waved one limp, sweating hand. Rubbed at his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Just go out there and stop this shit, will you? I got to go home to Margie one of these days. Okay?”

“Okay.” I squared my shoulders. “I’ll get this done ASAP, Monty.” Because if I don’t and a rogue Sorrow brings the Nameless through with an evocation, all hell’s going to break loose. And that’s not even half of it. “Do you want to know any more?”

“Christ, no. What you just told me is going to give me fuckin’ nightmares. Get out of my office; get to work. Give Carp and Rosie something new to do, and Sullivan and Badger too. I’ll keep the press distracted as long as I can. Just make this shit stop.”

“Okay, Monty.” I paused. “You’re good to work for, you know that?”

Another languid wave of the hand. He reached down into a half-open drawer and set a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Tums on his desk. “Get the fuck out of here, Jill.”

“See ya.”

I left, closing the door softly. Saul, leaning against a cubicle wall directly across from the door, examined me. I met his dark eyes for a long moment.

“This is getting too big,” he finally said, quietly, under the clamor of ringing phones and the shuffling sounds of the homicide division. “We need help. Not just human cops.”

What he didn’t say, we both thought. And a hellbreed neither of us trusts. My tattered coat rustled as I stepped away from Monty’s door. “What are we supposed to do? Call in a bunch of Weres to waste themselves on a suicide attack? No. We figure out how to take the wendigo out on our own. There’s got to be a way.”

“What about this Sorrow?” It was a good question. He fell into step beside me, shortening his stride to mine, and I was so abruptly grateful for his presence that my eyes prickled, both my dumb eye and the smart one.

“If Belisa’s telling the truth, she probably knows how to short-circuit whatever evocation this bitch is trying to perform—and if the wendigo’s involved. I just have to get a message to her that I’m willing to talk.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Simple. Just drop a word in the right ear, and it’ll get to her.”

“Which ear?”

“Relax, Saul. It’s taken care of, Perry put the word out this morning.” I slid my arm through his. “We’re going to set Rosie and Carp to digging with the Badger and Sullivan, and then we’re going to go have a little chat with this doctor. And after that, we’re going to visit Hutch’s bookstore and see what we can dig up on wendigos.”

The Badger was a short round motherly woman with a streak of white over her left temple, and Sullivan a thin, tall red-haired Irish with a penchant for cowboy hats. They were sometimes called Jack Sprat & Wife by the braver practitioners of cop humor, and put up with it estimably. They had reams of information on the organ trade in Santa Luz, too much for me to absorb. The Badger, bless her forward-thinking little heart, had photocopies of the more interesting cases as well as a few fact sheets.

I read in the car while Saul drove and Perry’s limo cut a narrow black swath behind us. I wasn’t sure I liked that albatross following us around, especially during the day, but the tightness of Saul’s jaw warned me not to say anything about it. I wondered what deal he’d made with Perry. Swallowed the question.

We made it to Quincoa against light traffic, and Saul parked in the same alley as before. Perry’s limo, in magnificent defiance of its own incongruity, idled, gleaming and black, across the street. I checked the sky—sunlight, still. He didn’t seem as scary in sunlight, but the limo had smoky tinted windows. He made no appearance, and I wondered once again what he was.

Vulnerable to sunlight? Or just not showing himself? Playing a game?

This time we didn’t lie in wait and examine the building.

No, this time Saul kicked the hermetically sealed door in on the second try, the deadbolt tearing free of softer metal. I had my gun out, swept the inside of the hall, and recoiled as the stench boiled out.

“Jesus God!” The reek drove me back a full three paces, to the edge of the steps. Death, and a loud zoolike odor. Saul wrinkled his nose, glanced at me. He had drawn his Sig Sauer, he covered the door. I swallowed bile. “What the fuck?”

“Stinks. And a sealed door.” He didn’t sound strained, but I caught the edge of disgust in his voice. “I smell more than one.”

“How many?”

“I can’t tell.”

“The wendigo—”

“I smell it too. But old. It hasn’t been here for a day or two.”

“Jesus.” I coughed, my eyes watering. “All right. Call Montaigne; tell him we’ve got a scene. I’m going in.”

“Jill—”

“Come on, Saul. I’m the hunter. There’s a pay phone on the corner. Or there’s a cell phone in Perry’s limo, if it comes to that. Hurry up so you can come back and cover me.” Though I don’t think the thing’s here. I don’t think anything’s left alive in here.