“Oh no,” the Inspectre said. “He really is a ‘prick,’ as you call him. I personally don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, and given my sad showing of physical fitness last night, it wouldn’t be very far. But someone higher up seems to believe he’s trustworthy, and that is good enough for me. And it will be good enough for you, too, Simon.”

He picked up the folder before him again as I sat in awkward silence, wondering if I had been dismissed or not. I knew the Inspectre disliked Thaddeus Wesker almost as much as I did, which made it all the more difficult to swallow my own feelings for the sake of such a delicate mission. But I would.

“Am I in any trouble for yelling at Wesker?” I asked.

“No,” the Inspectre laughed. “If everyone who ever thought ill of Wesker was in trouble for it, we wouldn’t even have enough people to run the coffee shop out front, let alone the Department.”

A wave of relief washed over me.

“Now go home and get some rest, my boy,” he said. “You look positively exhausted. I want you to come back later in the day, though. I need you to figure out three things: One, find out where Ms. Blatt disappeared to. As long as she’s out there missing, she’s still a target for Bane and his cultists and we need to know why.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Two, I need you to find out what happened to Jane after Wesker cut her safety line.” At the mention of her, I held my face like stone, hoping that I wasn’t giving away the fact that I knew exactly where she was. “Like you said, she’s relatively new to the Sectarian Defense League, so we may be able to sway her.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And three, I’m still waiting on that report on the Oracle.”

“Oracle?” I asked.

“Gaynor,” the Inspectre said. “The train mystic.”

With all the craziness in my life right now, I had totally forgotten Gaynor. Connor and I would have to sit down sometime relatively soon and hammer out the details so far on Irene’s case. But first, there was the riddle Gaynor had left us with.

I nodded to the Inspectre, and headed for the door as thoughts of Irene-and now Jane-filled my head. They would have to wait until later in the day. Right now, the call of sleep was already weaving its comfy tapestry around me and I had a date back home with a pillow that I didn’t want to miss.

21

It was just after two in the afternoon when I woke, and despite my growing concern for Irene’s whereabouts and my sequestered cultist hottie’s safety, I had experienced an intensely restful and immediate slumber thanks to the power of sheer exhaustion. As a bonus, there had been only four new calls on my answering machine from Tamara telling me how worthless I was and I had slept through them all. I considered myself doubly blessed on that count.

Freshly rested, I walked back through the Village to the Lovecraft Cafй, slowly feeling the worry of the past few days snowball itself upon me as my mind began to focus on my caseload again. When I walked in, Mrs. Teasley was at the rear of the coffee shop divining the location of a lost dental crown for a young couple. Normally I would have listened for a quick laugh and gotten fuel for a whole day’s outrage as to why that old charlatan was still on staff. With everything else on my mind, however, I proceeded straight through the coffee shop and back into the darkened theater. The projector was showing2001 -HAL was explaining to Dave why he couldn’t open the pod bay doors. I worked my way down the aisle to the heavy wooden door leading into our office.

As I headed for my desk, my mood became even darker. Connor and I were making little progress with Irene’s case. Her disappearance from my apartment last night made it even harder.

If Irene were just another case, I might be coping better or thinking straighter. But Irene had been more than that. I had enjoyed her presence in my apartment more and more. Then there was the strange kiss I had shared with Sectarian-in-exile Jane.

Jane.

I was worried about that sitch also. Maybe I’d gain some insight by reading the little black book of hers I’d found, but I hadn’t dared look at it yet. I was pretty sure it was a diary. I was both afraid and unprepared to violate her private thoughts. Having spied on her was one thing, but oddly enough, reading her diary was a level I wasn’t ready for yet. Everything about Jane threw me. The darkness in her was juxtaposed with a pleasant, earnest personality and what seemed like a desire to please others, and I couldn’t help but admit that I found her damn attractive despite her alliances.

As I approached my desk, I spied Connor sitting across at his, flipping intently through some books.

“Hey,” I said in greeting. I looked at my desk in disgust. It looked like a filing cabinet had thrown up all over it.

Connor smiled. “How ya feeling, kid?”

He didn’t seem to mind me strolling in midafternoon so I assumed that the Inspectre must have talked to him.

“I’m better,” I said, not wanting to get into all the dark details of the past twenty-four hours. “Long night.”

“So I heard,” Connor said, closing the book before him. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you recount the whole thing to me. I’m sure you’ve gone over the good, the bad, and the ugly of it with the Inspectre. Unless you want talk about it…?”

I appreciated the buddy-buddy effort Connor was extending, but I hadn’t told the Inspectre everything that had happened last night, and I wasn’t going to share it with Connor either.

Acting all touchy-feely wasn’t something Connor did too often. Usually, he’d give a lecture on objectivity or professionalism, about staying detached from my coworkers and our clients. He took a while to warm up to people. He didn’t talk much about his previous partners in the Department, and he had given me enough of a cold shoulder on the subject that I was smart enough never to bring them up. But suddenly he was being a regular Chatty Cathy. I wondered what exactly the Inspectre had told Connor about last night.

“Thanks,” I said, “but nah, I don’t need to talk about it. I’d rather we got down to business.”

“Fine by me,” Connor said. He grabbed up another book and buried his nose in it. After a few minutes, he gestured for me to join him, so I scooted my chair around. He had been a busy little researcher during my slumber this morning, and his desk was cluttered with travel brochures for Las Vegas, printouts of topographic maps, gambling guides, and a plentiful array of playing cards. Anything that might give us a clue to make sense of what we had heard from Gaynor.

“Any progress?” I asked. “What was it Gaynor said on the train again?”

“‘Follow the Vegas trail and all will become clear,’”Connor repeated, trying to sound like the mystic, but failing completely. “As you can see, I ransacked the resource room to find out everything I could about Vegas. Even brought in several decks of playing cards my grandmother brought back from a trip there several years ago. I called down to Lesser Arcana, hoping for some help tarot-ing up the cards. All they could spare was a lousy intern and she wasn’t very much use. She was able to tell me some secrets about where my grandmother hid our Christmas presents, but she didn’t give me anything useful about Irene.”

“Think the Department would spring for two plane tickets?” I asked hopefully. A little investigative work mixed with sun, spectacle, and the gaudy neon paradise of the Strip might be just what the doctor ordered to clear my head.

“Have you seen the revised budget the Mayor’s Office sent to us?” Connor said. “Davidson dropped off the newest cuts this morning.”

“Davidson was here?” I asked. “Today? You’ve got to be kidding. The man practically betrayed us at the Sectarian Defense League and now he has the unmitigated gall to show his face here?”