Free When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) by J.K. Beck

Angeles, they were facing the future together.

 
    Edgar Garvey stamped his feet and shook the rain off his coat as he pushed through the doors of the Beverly Hills Police Department. Before he’d moved to LA twenty-five years ago, he’d been assured that it never rained in Southern California. That would teach him to listen to pop music. He’d thought the city would be dry like his hometown of Phoenix. Hadn’t LA been plunked down in a desert just like the sprawling Arizona metropolis?
    “It’s a doozy out there,” Gus said. The white-haired old man worked the reception desk. With its art deco architecture and Beverly Hills location, the station got equal parts cops, criminals, and tourists wandering through the front door. Gus pointed them all in the right direction. “Supposed to clear off within the hour, though.”
    “Just hung around long enough to ruin my shoes,” Edgar said. He’d pulled the night shift, and had spent the day at home, listening to the rain patter on his roof. It had cleared up briefly around dinnertime, then started up again right as he was grabbing his keys to head out the door.
    He snatched the paper off Gus’s desk and perused the headlines, not in any hurry to get to his desk. When he’d worked Van Nuys, he’d been respected, at least for most of his stint in the field. But here, Edgar knew damn wellthat the other detectives talked behind his back, silently counting down until his retirement came through in six months.
    “So how come you aren’t out there?”
    Edgar folded the paper back, his finger marking the page with
For Better or For Worse
. He got one hell of a kick out of that comic strip. “Thought we already established that. The weather’s a bitch.”
    Gus laughed. “Thought we established that it’s gonna clear up. Nah, I’m talking about the body they found over in Franklin Canyon. Aren’t you working with the FBI on that task force?”
    Edgar put the paper down, comics forgotten. “What body?”
    “All I know is a couple stumbled across a girl with neck injuries. Sanders didn’t tag you?” he asked, referring to Lieutenant Elijah Sanders.
    “Musta been an oversight,” Edgar said, already moving away from the desk and pulling out his phone.
Shit, shit, shit
. He tapped out a text just before he stepped onto the elevator and lost the signal.
We may have one. Stand by
.
    When the elevator opened on the third floor, Edgar was stewing. He didn’t even notice the heads that turned in his direction, then immediately turned away, uninterested. These men weren’t his friends, his buddies. They weren’t watching his back. When he’d first transferred over, that fact had rubbed him raw. He’d been newly married. A flatfoot suddenly hooked up with a Beverly Hills beauty, and a sitcom star to boot. Nobody had understood what she’d seen in a schlub like him, but Gilli had shared his beliefs—his certainty that there wassomething else out there. The press had called her eccentric. His fellow cops had called him a crackpot.
    After the wreck, they’d shut up. Not because they thought he was any less of a freak, but because it seemed untoward to rib a man after his wife drove her convertible over a cliff. By then, Edgar didn’t give a fuck what they called him. Make fun of him, don’t make fun of him. None of it would bring Gilli back.
    Today, six-plus years after her death, he still didn’t give a shit. He knew the score—knew what was really going on. More than that, he had a job to do and a new partner to help.
    And he wasn’t keen on Sanders mucking up the works.
    The door to Lieutenant Sanders’s office was shut tight, and the cheap vinyl blinds that allowed the detective privacy from his squad were down and closed. That usually meant that the lieutenant was in a ripe fury, and when the LT was pissed, it was best to stay out of his way. Not happening. Not today.
    Edgar strode right up to his door, ignoring the stares of the other men. Especially ignoring