Federal Discipline by Loki Renard Read Free Book Online Page B

disappeared.” She began to tear up in spite of her staunch efforts to remain impassive. “I did not recognize him at the morgue.”
    “No,” Jack said gently. “I understand it was the dental records that provided the match.”
    “Yes,” she sniffed, delicately dabbing at her eye with a lace trimmed kerchief. “I can't quite bring myself to believe it.”
    “Did he show any signs of instability before he went missing?”
    “No,” she said, “none. Lee was a very clean living man. He was religious and serious about his health. He would never have done anything like this of his own volition.”
    “Can you think of anything that might have caused him to snap this way?”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head profusely. “The only thing I can imagine is some kind of... some kind of daemonic possession.”
    Jack glanced over and noticed that Jamie had indeed made a note on her pad about daemon ic possession. Of all possible causes of death, Jack did not regard it as being one of the more likely contributors.
    “We will be investigating his death very thoroughly, Mrs . Brampton. You have my word on that,” Jack said. “We may need to contact you again with further questions. I hope you will be available.”
    Taking a lavender kerchief, Mrs. Brampton dabbed at her eyes and then nose, neither of which were running. “I will do all I can,” she assured him.
    “Then for the moment, we will leave you be. Thank you very much for your time, Mrs . Brampton.”
    *****
    “Maybe we should get her a psych screen,” Jamie said as they rode down in a shining elevator, which played strains of classical violin over the smooth churning of gears and rollers beyond the embossed walls.  “She's gone off the deep end.”
    “H mm?”
    “The daemon thing. She's blaming this on ghosts. Isn't that ridiculous?”
    “Grieving people will believe in anything,” Jack replied. “It's no doubt easier to think that her husband was taken over by an evil spirit rather than left her of his own volition and spiraled into a very dark place.”
    “I guess,” Jamie said, sounding a little more sympathetic. “I mean, how does a stockbroker end up a meth-head throwing himself at the cops?”
    “Psychotic break, perhaps induced by prior drug use,” Jack suggested. “These brokers usually aren't strangers to cocaine at the very least. It's not all that great a jump to crystal meth. The wife may not have known about it, may have attributed signs of drug use to overwork.”
    “Hmm,” Jamie nodded. “Makes sense.”
    “Right now,” he said. “We're going back to the scene of the death. Forensics should be done with it by now, we'll see what we can glean from the place and see if there is anyone about to interview.”
    “Sounds good, boss,” Jamie smiled.
    He smiled back. After the first day from hell, Jamie was actually being very pleasant and placid. Maybe he had misjudged her. Maybe she wasn't a complete pain in the rear end. Maybe it had just been those first day jitters that made her so completely arrogant.
    Together, Jack and Jamie drove out of the city center and to the rundown edge where city met suburb in a stormy clash of class and culture. Just a few miles further and there were leafy green well-manicured yards with painstakingly whitewashed fences and well kept houses with all-American families. But where they stood, large red brick buildings rose four stories high, housing those who did not quite have the income to purchase a little piece of peripheral paradise.
    “Man,” Jamie said as they got out of the car. “This place is a dump.”
    A certain smell hung in the air, a used, decayed, dirty smell as if all the inhabitants had decided that bathing was too bourgeois. In reality, it was not a matter of those who lived there smelling, but the fumes of nearby factories, tanneries and gelatin plants belching the rot of animal decay into the atmosphere.
    Out here, when something got broke n, it stayed broken. Many of the