Free Storm (The Storm Chronicles Book 6) by Skye Knizley

doubt she would. She might have Raven’s face and voice, but she wasn’t Raven. “Just, wait outside, okay?”
    Sable frowned, but nodded and turned to the exit. Levac waited until she was in the next room then looked back at Sandoval.
    “I’m sorry about that, sir.”
    Sandoval frowned. “New partner?”
    Levac shook his head. “Temporary. My partner, Raven, is on medical leave.”
    A shadow of something crossed Sandoval’s face. “Raven…good name, boy. It means black, too. Two partners named Black?”
    Now it was Levac’s turn to frown. He hadn’t thought of that. But he shrugged it off and licked his pencil. “They’re twin sisters. Now, can you tell me if you and your partner found anything odd? Anything you didn’t let the public know or that isn’t in the file?”
    “We didn’t report a lot. No one would have believed us. It was in the file originally, but old Captain Jenkins took it out and burned it, photos and all,” Sandoval said.
    “Like what?”
    “The satanic nonsense,” Sandoval said. “Blood, skulls, things painted on the walls, it was everywhere. But with the Nazi’s being the boogey man of the day, we hushed it up.”
    He turned his wheelchair and pointed at a lockbox beneath the bed. “Pull that out.”
    Levac dragged the box out and set it on a table near a Sandoval. Sandoval pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the box.
    “The file is at the bottom, copies of all my sketches, everything I salvaged and could remember,” he said.
    Levac dug through decades of memorabilia and pulled out a file thick with yellowing papers. He pulled the rotting rubber band holding it together and flipped through. There were old black and white photos of the office, sketches of the body and crime scene and diagrams of the ‘satanic’ items that Sandoval had mentioned. Levac recognized skulls and some of the occult symbols on the wall, but not all.
    “What do you think happened?” he asked.
    Sandoval’s face hardened again. “You want the honest truth, Agent Levac?”
    Levac turned. “I do.”
    “I think the dumb son of a bitch called something, and it killed him. Took his soul right out of his body,” Sandoval said.
    “Why do you say that?”
    Sandoval leaned forward in his chair. “I’m too old to lie, Agent Levac. The man was cold. I don’t mean corpse cold, I mean cold. You could feel it coming off of him, and his eyes were all white, like snowballs in his head.”
    He tapped his knee for emphasis. “That man had no soul.”
    He leaned back and looked old, much older than he had when Levac entered.
    “Thank you, Detective. May I take this?” Levac asked.
    Sandoval nodded. “Take it, I don’t want it anymore.”
    Levac snapped the band in place and fished a business card out of his pocket. He offered the wrinkled slip of paper to Sandoval.
    “If you think of anything or need anything, please feel free to call, night or day.”
    Sandoval took it and ran a thumb over the logo. “Section Thirteen. I’ll be damned.”
    Levac nodded.
    Sandoval closed his eyes. “I need to rest. Come back tomorrow if you still have questions.”
    “Thank you again, Detective.”
    Levac turned away moved toward the next room. He paused and looked back. “One more thing, Detective. What was Big Mack’s name? His real name?”
    Sandoval roused himself and focused his grey eyes on Levac. “Mason.”
    “Thought so.”
    He found Sable outside. She was leaned up against an old tree, a cigarette in her hand. She blew the smoke out through her nose and arched an eyebrow.
    “Anything?”
    Levac held up the file he’d been carrying. “Just his old case file. He made a copy of the full thing before they edited it for public consumption.”
    “Oh, nice!” Sable said. “What did he say?”
    Levac waved smoke out of his face. “There was some kind of satanic ritual in the room where they found Saylor’s body. He also said that he thought Saylor had no soul.”
    Sable tossed her cigarette in the