Free Ghosts & Echoes by Lyn Benedict Page A

and you turn ’em and it’s pretty and shiny but it never makes sense. It’s like there’s a piece missing.” He went back to picking at his jeans.
    She didn’t say anything. She might be a bitch, but she didn’t kick a man when he was down. Unless he deserved it.
    “I’m still sticking to you like glue,” he muttered.
    She licked her lips, hated to give him false hope, but ghost or not, his distress was real. “I’ll get someone to take a closer look, do a proper diagnosis. I can help you that much.”
    A rude laugh interrupted their talk; Felipe Suarez loomed over them. His partner, three steps ahead, holding two cups of coffee, paused on his way toward the exit. “Shadows, you don’t help people. You fuck ’em over. I’d run back to your wife, Chicago, if I were you. Or you’ll end up on a slab.”
    “Felipe, man, c’mon,” his partner urged, and silence fell in their wake.
    Wright cleared his throat. “So, why exactly are they out to get you?”
    “Rafi . . . Rafael Suarez was an employee of mine, as well as related to a good chunk of the force.”
    “Was?”
    Yeah, trust a cop to home right in on the point.
    “He died. We tangled with some would-be sorcerers, and he got killed.” It cost her something still to winnow Rafi to cold fact and report his death in a level tone.
    “They blame you,” Wright said. “ ’Cause grief makes people crazy. I get that. So our arresting officer?”
    “First cousin, Felipe Suarez,” Sylvie said. “And if it hadn’t been him, it could have been one of Rafi’s brothers, his uncle, his sister, or his father. They’re a big family, and they bleed blue. So, they lose my permits and give me the runaround. We’ll sit, they’ll yell at me, maybe fine me. Depends on how bad their day went.”
    “Lightner!” A big-voiced man in a rumpled suit poked his head into the hall, saw her cuffed, and sighed. He scrubbed at his face, stubble dark along his jaw, eyes weary. The very picture of a tired man about to go off shift and finding that he had one last unwelcome task to complete.
    He disconnected her from the seat, the jangle of hand-cuffs, and pointed her down the hall. “You know the way.”
    She wiggled her fingers bye-bye at Wright and let Detective Adelio Suarez lead her into one of the interrogation rooms.

    THE ROOM WAS A FLUORESCENT HELL: CHEAP LINOLEUM, CHEAP paint, cheap video camera aimed squarely at the table bolted to the floor, all of it reflecting the flicker-shine of the false light. A rectangular window high up, filled with wire-mesh glass, showed a sky going blue and bright outside.
    Here we go again, she thought, stiffening her spine. It was hard: With all the other Suarezes, she felt equal portions irritation and patience. With Adelio Suarez—she just felt guilt. Rafael had been his son, and when Rafi had come to work for her, she’d told Adelio she’d keep him safe. He’d been pleased. One child out of the line of fire.
    He stabbed his thumb at the chair. “Sit.”
    Disobedience ran deep in her soul, but she dropped into the wooden chair, heard it screek against the faded turquoise linoleum as she shifted her weight. The sooner she shut up, the sooner she’d be out of here. He paced behind her; then, just when she was preparing to start the game by asking for a phone call, he said, “Wait here,” and left the room. A total change of pattern. It made her wary.
    Adelio came back with a file folder, and her gun, which he set on the table before her. It drew her eyes like a magnet; she missed his first words, lost in the itch to reclaim what was hers.
    “. . . even with your testimony and Ms. Figueroa-Smith’s, we’ve had no luck finding the cultists that killed my son. We’ve got a set of probable names, but the suspects themselves are gone. All of them vanish on the same night, except for one of them, who disappeared some days earlier—a college student named Mira Castellan. She vanished from the UM campus, and funny thing is,