THE LIST

The first one on the list was Georgio Byrne Lawton-Smythe. I found him at the Maumee Grill on Mulberry and Fifth, just south of the river. There was no good way to talk to him, under the circumstances, but that didn't bother me. Nothing he said would have made any difference to me, and nothing I said would have made any difference to him. Or to put it another way, I didn't hate him enough to bother. I just walked up to him and put three 12-gauge solid slugs into his chest, like, blam cha-chink blam cha-chink blam. Then I dropped the shotgun, walked out the door, and turned left. I threw my gloves into the river and hiked all the way to East Broadway before I caught a cab to bring me back to Toledo and my hotel.

* * *

Just after 2:00 East Coast time on Thursday morning, Donovan Jackson Longfellow initiated a Skype call to Marci No-Middle-Name Sullivan. She came on quickly enough that he could be pretty sure she'd been awake and at her computer, so he didn't bother asking if he'd interrupted anything.

"We caught one," he said without preamble.

"Oh, my."

"Yep. Ready to go into action?"

She might have nodded, but then remembered how hard it was to make out gestures on Skype, so she said. "Yes, sir."

"Don't call me sir. My name is Donovan, or Don, or Donny."

"All right. How does this work?"

"You ask me what's up, and I tell you what we know."

"Um. Okay. What's up?"

"West Nowhere Ohio, a place called Perrysburg. Guy torn in half with a shotgun."

"A shotgun? That doesn't seem like, you know, our kind of thing. I speak under correction, of course."

"Yeah, you'll stop doing that soon. Here's what we know: It happened in a restaurant in the middle of dinner hour, there were plenty of people there, and no one saw anything." Before she could ask, he elaborated. "I don't mean couldn't ID the shooter; I mean I saw nothing. One second everything is fine; next second there's a dead guy messy on the floor with a shotgun next to him and blood spreading out and all the nice people freaking out and throwing up. The PO-lice are stumped, and Upstairs is talking nightmare scenario. Of course, they do that all the time, so I figure mildly troubling dream scenario until proven otherwise. But we still need to check it out."

"How are they explaining it? I mean, the police."

"They figure everyone was shocked by the horror of it all, or some shit. Customers and staff are under scrutiny. They won't get shit that way."

"So the police believe it was someone in the restaurant?"

"What else could they believe? But the important thing is that we don't believe it, so we need to investigate."

"Do we know who the victim is?"

"Name hasn't been released. Upstairs has ways of getting past that, but they're still working on it."

"Okay," she said. "Just you and me?"

"I'm also calling in the hippie chick, because it's better to have her and not need her than, you know."

"Hippie chick?"

"Susan."

"Oh! I know her. She's the one who pulled me out of the kiddie pool."

"Right."

"So, now what?"

"Now you ask how you're supposed to get there."

"All right. How do I get there?"

"Um, yeah, good question. Let me think." Donovan weighed the pros and cons of delaying half a day, went through an imagined conversation with Oversight, and said, "You've been checked out on your slipwalk, right?"

Marci might have nodded again, but then said, "Yes."

"We'll go that way, then. The scene is already two days old. Can't expect you to sense it if we wait another twelve hours for travel."

"Two days?"

"A bit more."

"I probably won't get anything as it is. Why so long?"

"Access. The crime scene is still closed, but they've stopped guarding it."

"Oh. I don't know how these things work. Couldn't the Foundation have pulled strings and gotten us in earlier?"

"They probably don't think it's important enough to pull the big guns out. It's critical and could mean the end of the world, but we can't spare any resources. That's sort of how things work." He shrugged, though she wouldn't see it. "I don't know. That's above my pay grade."

Marci muttered something non-committal.

"Look," said Donovan. "Don't sweat it, all right? We go in, check it out. You get something or you don't, I report to Upstairs. If you get something, we try to figure out what it means. If not, I go back to Internet hearts, Hippie Chick goes back to organic gardening, and you go back to whatever it is you do."

"All right. I just hate it when — all right."

"Also, what are you wearing?"

"What? Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Is there a dress code?"

"Kind of. Business casual is all right, or jeans and a T-shirt."

"What isn't all right?"

"Don't look like you're going clubbing."

"Is this really a thing?"

"Look. It matters. There are practical reasons."

"What practical reasons?"

"You'll figure it out."

"I — all right. I'll trust you on that. For now."

"Thanks."

"Anything else?"

"No, that's it."

"Are you calling Susan or am I?"

"I am."

"Does she really do organic gardening?"

"Wouldn't surprise me. The place is called the Maumee Grill." He started to give her the whole command line for the slipwalk, but decided it was disrespectful. If she ended up in Greenland or something he'd regret it, but she was now on histeam, so he'd assume competence until proven otherwise. "I'll meet you outside the yellow tape. See you in an hour?"

"An hour," she said, and he disconnected.

He made the next call, which took a little longer to connect. Susan Dionisia Kouris eventually appeared. Even though it was before midnight in her time zone, she looked more than half-asleep. She was wearing a blue terry-cloth bathrobe.

"Sorry to wake you up," he said.

"Ugh," she explained.

"Need some time?"

"No, it's all right. I'm at the tail end of a chest cold. I'm trying to sleep it off. We have something?"

He nodded. "Yeah. A body. Up for it?"

"Always. I'll take a decongestant."

He gave her what details he had and hung up.

Donovan stood up and stretched, then put his coat on — the ugly-but-warm fleece-lined one. He also put on a stocking cap, because sometimes when it's cold you just have to sacrifice looks for survival, or comfort at any rate.

He checked his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, knotnot, latex gloves, and blackjack. He was unlikely to need the blackjack, especially with Hippie Chick there, but he felt naked without it. He left the apartment, took the elevator to the basement, and let himself into the laundry room.

Building management had...