Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [68]
I stood and started sorting papers. “You haven’t missed anything yet.”
“I just love being lied to.”
“We’re not lying,” I said.
“Then why is the tension level so high in here?”
“Shut up, Bernardo,” Edward said.
Bernardo didn’t take it as an insult. He just shut up and handed out the coffee.
I sorted out all the witness reports I could find, then spent the next three hours reading them. I’d read one report back to front and found out nothing the police and Edward hadn’t known weeks ago. Now I was looking for something new, something that the police, Edward, the experts they’d called in, nobody had found. It sounded egotistical, but Edward seemed sure I’d find it, whatever it was. Though I was beginning to wonder if it was confidence in me or sheer desperation on Edward’s part that made him so sure I’d find something. I’d give it my best shot, and that was all I could do.
I looked down at several stacks of witness reports and settled in to read. I know most people read each report in full, or almost in full, then move to the next, but in a serial crime you were looking for a pattern. On serial murders I’d learned to divide the files up into parts: all the witness statements, then all the forensic reports, then the pictures of the crime scene, etc. . . . Sometimes I did the pictures first, but I was putting it off. I’d seen enough in the hospital to make me squeamish. So the pictures could wait, and I could still do legitimate work on the case without having to see all the horrors. Procrastination with a purpose, what could be better?
Bernardo kept making us all coffee and continued to play host, going back and forth when the coffee ran low, offering food, though we both declined. When he brought me my umpteenth cup of coffee, I finally asked, “Not that I’m not grateful, but you didn’t strike me as the domestic type, Bernardo. Why the perfect host routine? It’s not even your house.”
He took the question as an invitation to move closer to my chair until his jean-clad thigh was touching the arm, but it wasn’t touching me so that was fine. “You want to ask Edward to go for coffee?”
I looked across the table at Edward. He didn’t bother to look up from the papers in his hands. I smiled. “No, I was more thinking I’d get my own.”
Bernardo turned and leaned his butt against the table, arms crossed over his chest. Muscles played in his arms as if he were flexing just a bit for my benefit. I didn’t think he was even aware he was doing it, as if it were habit.
“Truthfully?” he asked.
I looked up at him and sipped the coffee he’d brought me. “That would be nice.”
“I’ve read the reports more than once. I don’t want to read them again. I’m tired of playing detectives and wish we could just go kill something, or at least fight something.”
“Me, too,” Edward said. He was watching us now with cool blue eyes. “But we have to know what we’re fighting, and the answer to that is in here somewhere.” He motioned at the mounds of papers.
Bernardo shook his head. “Then why haven’t we, or the police, found the answer in all this paper?” He ran his finger down the nearest stack. “I don’t think paperwork is going to catch this bastard.”
I smiled up at him. “You’re just bored.”
He looked down at me, a little startled expression on his face, then he laughed, head back, mouth wide as if he were howling at the moon. “You haven’t known me long enough to know me that well.” Laughter was still sparkling in his brown eyes, and I wished it were a different pair of brown eyes. My chest was suddenly tight with missing Richard. I looked down at the papers in my lap, not sure if it would show in my eyes. If my eyes showed sorrow, I didn’t want Bernardo to see it. If my eyes showed longing, I didn’t want him to misinterpret it.
“Are you bored, Bernardo?” Edward asked.
Bernardo turned at the waist so he could see Edward with a minimum of movement. It put his bare chest facing me. “No women, no television, nothing to kill, bored, bored, bored.”
I found myself staring at his chest. I had an urge to