Ray didn’t deny it. “He’ll still need help with everything else, help and something to ensure his safety. This is money, and power, and the police department, possibly the DA’s office too, acting with them, officially or not. He’s just one half-fairy.”
She pursed her lips, taking that in, then shook her head. “He is a lot more than that and you know it. And he has Rainbow and Bluebell and Calvin Parker behind him. And let’s not discount Benny even with the squeamish stomach. But, it’s true; Cal is not subtle when he’s fired up… or any time, really. More information to help him would probably be good, if you’ve decided to do something foolish in what you think are your last days. I mean, that is what you’re saying, right? All nonverbal and were?”
Ray huffed and stared back out at the street. No one around them was paying them even the slightest attention. The music drew more people in. They were focused on that. Not two people by a fountain.
He straightened his shoulders, then nodded. “I want to go look at the alley again. And get the name of the company or companies who own these lots.”
“That is a bad idea,” Penn pointed out in a reasonable, unsurprised tone.
“There is no one else to call.” Ray felt the need to remind her and to stress the danger. “Unless you want to risk a retired old man, or a magic human who does taxes, or a half-fairy with an obvious weak spot.”
“I already said I was along for the ride,” Penn protested mildly, although she hadn’t put it in those terms. She got to her feet before Ray did. “Come on then. While everyone is distracted with all that.” She jerked her chin toward the block party.
“It’s a good time,” Ray offered after they’d crossed the street again and headed around the corner of a small apartment building with lights in some windows. His heart was beating fast. His last visit here had been uneventful, but his body remembered the first. “Everyoneisdistracted with all that. A good time to try again, or try something new.” It didn’t mean anyone would. But it wasn’t impossible.
Penn hissed again, and reached back to check the gun she wasn’t wearing. She did have her badge, and gave Ray a look when she remembered he didn’t.
“When you make up your mind, you really make up your mind. Weres.” She said it like a swear word.
She was also whispering. Ray wondered if she realized she was.
Chapter Nineteen
THE ALLEY remained just an alley. A place used to temporarily store garbage and not much else, since it was a dead end and didn’t even offer itself as a shortcut. The smells had changed slightly, but that was to be expected. The trash had been picked up in the preceding days.
No one had searched through the cans that had been there when Ray had been found. Why would they? No real investigation had ever taken place. No one wanted to dig through garbage on the slim chance that there might be something in there to help Ray.
The space around them was dark. Of the occupied buildings in the area, the windows with lights in them were too high up to do much good, and there were no streetlights behind the buildings. Ray had to lead the way for Penn until they were out of the alley, near the fairy graffiti and the business that had a dim light over its back door.
It still didn’t make sense that Ray ever would have been there, and that he would have gone without at least signaling his intent to Penn. If Ray was as distrustful of the other police as he suspected he must have been by then, he wouldn’t have gone with anyone without looking to his partner.
“What did they say they found at the initial building to account for the chemical smells?” Ray stopped short of reentering the sidewalk to consider the building under discussion. Lights remained on in several of its windows. People living there had smelledsomethingand been worried enough to call.
“Abandoned paint thinner in the basement. Cleaning products from decades ago down there with them. Enough to bother people, I guess.” Penn came up next to him. “After the other incidents, I don’t blame them.”
“But in the fall?” Ray rubbed his nose. “Not the summer when the heat might have done something to make the odor so strong? The stuff was down there for maybe years, and only now was it a problem? I smelled it, that day. Not a lot. But there was something. Did removing it end the complaints?”
“If you’re asking me if the landlord took care of it all promptly, I couldn’t say. If the fire department fined them, possibly. Do you want me to check for any more calls about a smell?”
Ray looked down at her and rubbed his nose again.
Penn smiled, a real one, making Ray smile too for a moment.
“Right.” Penn waved him forward. “Lead on, McGruff.”
Ray allowed the dog joke, if only because he thought Penn’s hissing was closer to that of a goose than a snake or a cat, and was saving a goose remark for the perfect moment.
He walked slowly, Penn at his side, with one or two people heading in the opposite direction, usually on the other side of the street. Ray was, after all, big and broad, and the street lights, while modern, did not instill a sense of safety and warmth.
Ray had never smelled a great quantity of paint thinner before, but he knew the scent in small amounts, and that was not what he found traces of in the air. Nor did it seem to originate from that building. But if he were human, he supposed he would have accepted ‘some old cans of paint thinner’ as an explanation. And ‘cleaning solutions’ could cover a lot of things.
He kept going, nose in the air, until he reached the chain link fence he did not recall seeing a few days ago. He hadn’t thought about it that morning, but someone spent money to put up weak fencing with a gate in front that had been left open, to protect a building that did not look occupied.
“If you were worried about arson in your building, wouldn’t youat leastclose the gate?” Penn moved around Ray to look at the sign hanging from part of the fence.
Leland Properties. One of several real estate and property development companies found in the documents on that drive. Ray wished he could remember how they’d attracted his attention in the first place.
“It’s stronger here.” Ray exhaled through his nose to try to banish some of the odor, which was faint, but the breeze was blowing away from him at the moment. Ray also had to define the scent as merely ‘chemical’ like any human would have, since he didn’t know what it was or recognize any individual components at this distance.
