Niceville

Ruelle. I don’t know what this all means,” said Lacy, “but you better go find out.”
    “I will,” said Nick. “Thanks, Lacy.”
    “Keep me in the loop, will you?”
    “When I know, you’ll know. Bye.”
    He switched off, hit AUTO-DIAL . The phone rang six times, and then went to voice mail.
    “Kate, when you get this, call me on my cell. You sitting down? Great news. Rainey Teague just woke up. Yes. Woke up. He’s responsive, whatever that means, but he’s got a ways to go to be all right. Still great news. Anyway, I wanted you to be the first to know. Love you, babe. Call me.”
    “Not home?” asked Beau.
    “Probably out in the yard,” said Nick, hitting a speed-dial number. Tig Sutter answered on the second ring.
    “Nick—you heard?”
    “I heard. We’re on our way to Lady Grace now. Do we still have the jurisdiction here?”
    “Oh yeah. Case is still open. I’ve already called the doctors down there. They’re saying the kid’s not coherent, but he’s definitely conscious. They’re going to do a bunch of tests on him, but I told them to keep him alert until you got there.”
    “Incredible, Tig,” said Nick, his heart lightening in a way it hadn’t ever since the case kicked off. “You know I’ve never even talked to the kid?”
    “Yeah, well, remember, he doesn’t know his parents are dead. That’s going to be a tricky call.”
    “He’s not going to hear it from me. Not today, anyway—”
    “He’ll be asking.”
    “Yeah. I can’t reach Kate. She’s his legal guardian. She ought to be there, see to what he needs, sign whatever has to be signed.”
    “Nick, this is going to sound crazy, but the docs are saying the kid calmed down when he heard Lemon Featherlight’s voice. If Kate’s not available, maybe you could go in that direction?”
    “We should think about that, Tig. Guy’s a CI, a drug dealer—”
    “Lemon connected with the kid last year. Even Tony Branko at Vice thought Lemon’s heart was in the right place. I think it’s worth a shot.”
    Nick thought it over.
    “Okay. I’ll give him a try. Did you hear from the lab yet?”
    “You mean that goddam cat? What’d you do to her, anyway? Yaztremski says the thing’s crazy.”
    “He get anything off her coat?”
    “Not much, so far. Blood, and it was definitely human, but it had broken down a lot. Yaz thinks it might have come from a body been dead quite a while. Not the same blood type as either Delia Cotton or Gray Haggard. We’ve got a forensic team going over the house now—”
    “Yeah? How they liking the house?”
    “What? Liking the house? Like how?”
    “They talk to the Armed Response guy? Dale Jonquil? He said he saw some weird shit in the mirrors there. So did Mavis Crossfire.”
    So did I
.
    Skulls
.
    Coffins
.
    Slaves
.
    “CSI didn’t say anything useful, Nick, but those people
never
say anything useful. You follow that thing down at Saint Innocent?”
    “From a distance. I hear Mavis did good.”
    “Yeah. I talked to her a few minutes ago. They’re going to give her a commendation. Giving Coker one too, for spotting that stovepipe round. Saved that man’s life, between the two of them. They’ve got Dennison in Psychiatric for now, but all in all, he may not even do much time.”
    “You getting anywhere with the snitch?”
    “I asked Byron Deitz to put one of his IT guys on it, but so far no word back. I’m hoping, though. Deitz says the guy’s the best there is.”
    “I saw Deitz a minute ago, going northbound on Long Reach in that gigantic Hummer. He was gunning me like he wanted to talk, but I had the lights on. He and Phil Holliman still stomping all over Boonie’s investigation?”
    “I told him to jerk Holliman’s chain. He said he would. You wanted to know about that metal shit you found in the dining room at Temple Hill?”
    “I thought it was shrapnel. Was it?”
    “First take from Metallurgy was that it was shell fragments from … get this … a German .88.”
    “How’d they figure that?”
    “One of the guys at Metallurgy is a fragments freak. Has cans and boxes full of various bits of shell casings, debris from car bombs, whatever—he’s compiling a sort of reference library about it. He takes one look at the bits, scrapes some shavings, puts them under a scope, looks up and says German .88. Here’s the thing. Haggard was at Omaha, and he got a chest full of shrapnel when he got to the top of the cliffs. From a German .88, according to the