Inherit the Dead

like a half a mile up there, but he could still see the doors were open and pushed out to welcome the cold February day.
    “Oh, no,” Perry said. “I think that’s the penthouse apartment of—”
    “Julia Drusilla,” Watson said, finishing Perry’s thought. Watson asked a paramedic to step aside, and when the man did Perry could see the body.
    She was facedown on the pavement, arms and legs splayed out at broken angles, the fan of her hair resting on her shoulders, one shoe on and one shoe off. A single rivulet of black blood snaked out from beneath her and serpentined across the pavement square until it pooled in the gutter around a comma of ice.
    “Jesus,” Perry whispered. He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. There was no mistaking her. Even in death she had a bad attitude.
    Perry felt other detectives move in on him, from behind and on his sides. Watson just stood there, trying to read something from Perry’s face that would give him some kind of insight.
    “You were working for her,” Watson said. “So you know more about her than we do right now. Like maybe why she decided to jump out of her window.”
    Perry shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. Julia Drusilla was too damn mean and had way too much money coming to kill herself.
    Watson said, “We’re going to leave here and go get a nice warm room at the station. And Perry, you’re going to tell me everything you know about Julia Drusilla.”
    Perry assented with a stunned grunt.
    As Watson led Perry toward a waiting cruiser, the pig-eyed cop looked over his shoulder and said, “Say good-bye to your meal ticket, Christo.”

18
MAX ALLAN COLLINS
    T he desk sergeant barely looked up as Watson swiped his badge to the second floor, Perry right beside him.
    As they moved through, Watson’s latest partner—a smirky kid named Fleming, maybe working his first dead body—joined them as they wound their way back to one of the interview rooms.
    Fleming was in his late twenties, fair-haired and fresh-faced. He looked a lot like a junior-league Watson in his slightly better suit, a gray pinstripe; the older detective’s was navy blue and, as usual, as rumpled as an unmade bed. Perry hadn’t met Fleming the other day, and he didn’t think he was going to like him.
    Watson and the kid cop dropped into chairs on one side of the table and Watson waved Perry to a chair opposite, then reached forward and hit Record on the small digital recorder that was the table’s tiny metallic centerpiece.
    Still standing, arms spread with his palms up, Perry asked, “An interview room? Recording me? Henry, am I a suspect?”
    Patting the air between them, Watson said, “No, no, but she was your client, after all. Just have a seat.”
    Reluctantly, Perry did so, as Watson told the recorder the date and time, adding the name of the interviewee, of course.
    Perry said, “Yes, she was my client.”
    “Why did she hire you?”
    “You know why.”
    “This is for the record.” Watson nodded at the recorder and gave Perry the edge of a smile.
    Perry saw nothing to gain by dodging the question. Julia was dead, and there wasn’t a damn thing to be done about it. “She hired me to find her estranged daughter.”
    “The daughter have a name?”
    “Angelina Loki.”
    “Spell that please.”
    Perry did.
    “And it was her cell phone you had me run down?”
    “You already know that.”
    “It’s for the record. I’m sorry, but I have to do my job here—you know that.”
    Perry knew the pressure would be on Watson, that Julia Drusilla’s body was his jurisdiction, suicide or not. He nodded.
    “Verbal response, please.”
    “Yes. Her cell phone.”
    “Did you find her?”
    “I found her.”
    “So, then . . . I assume your client was pleased?”
    Shrugging, Perry said, “I never had the chance to tell her. When I got to the apartment, she was . . . you know.”
    “Splattered?” Fleming said.
    Watson shot the kid a look, but Perry didn’t react. He wouldn’t give the smart-ass kid the satisfaction. And if Watson had set up the ancient good-cop/bad-cop wheeze, he wouldn’t dignify that with a reaction, either. Was his old friend trying to put some distance between them? Was that what this was about?
    Watson asked, “So . . . Julia Drusilla never knew you found her daughter?”
    “That’s right. She didn’t.” Would it have made any difference if he’d reached her as soon as he’d found Angel? Perry wasn’t so sure. At the time he’d