The Devil You Know by Mike Carey Read Free Book Online Page B

instinctively looked up, then felt a letdown inside. It wasn’t Vivian; it was Holly King. She crept up to the counter like a criminal and said she was interested in books on folk medicine for a school project she was working on, specifically abortifacients.
    Le sigh.

The following morning I woke to find Ben had left a message on my cell. He said he was going back to interview the Bergers that afternoon and I could ride shotgun, if I wanted to. He thought maybe I could gleam some kind of information if I went through Cassandra Berger’s possessions. Ben labors under the assumption that I can do psychometry, the psychic ability to learn about an object by touching it. It’s a nice thought, but I can’t do that. I have other mad skills, like the ability to recognize clues. But I wasn’t about to correct Ben; I wanted to see the Bergers again too much.
    I called him back and told him to pick me up on the way. I was fresh from my morning shower and I hadn’t overslept. See, I really do know how to act like an adult. After I was dressed and looked human, I put the kettle on in the kitchen. Then I leaned against the sink and called Morgana, who hadn’t come home last night. I felt a small stab of guilt when she picked up. She sounded . . . ahem, busy.
    “Yeah, Nick,” she said, sounding out of breath and a tad annoyed. Morgana likes early-morning romps, though I can’t fathom it myself. I am so not a morning person. Sex in the morning is like breakfast; such things should never happen on this plain of existence.
    “Sorry. Interrupting, am I?”
    “You are. But you’re not sorry about it.” I could hear her squirming around in the sheets, probably trying to find a more private position to talk on her cell.
    “Is he good?” I asked.
    “Nick!”
    “Better than me?”
    “Nick, stop it. You’re such a pervert.”
    I smiled. “Ben called. He’s going back to interview the Bergers again. He wants me along to look at the little girl’s room.” I paused. “I want to go, Morgana. I want to help find the girl, if I can.”
    “What do you need from me, Nick?”
    “He’ll be here around eleven. Any chance you can take the shop then? I don’t want to close up with the busy season and all.”
    I waited as Morgana checked her schedule on her iPad. “I don’t have any appointments until tonight. I’ll try and get back by ten.”
    “I appreciate that.”
    “You’re still a pervert,” she said, and hung up.

    Another thing about Ben is, he’s punctual, and he expects everyone else to be.
    At five to ten, I finished gelling my bad haircut into one of those modern spiky men’s do’s, slid a casual, yet cop-like blazer over my pullover, and went downstairs. As the big Swiss-style clock tower standing erect over Blackwater started tolling the tenth hour, Ben pulled up in his police cruiser and I slid into the passenger side.
    “Looking sharp,” Ben said.
    “I try to avoid the vagabond look when I talk to suspects. It makes them nervous.”
    “You really think the Bergers are up to something?” he said as he pulled out onto the main drag and headed west toward the developments. I knew he wouldn’t be asking me if this investigation wasn’t important to him. But there was the rub: this was important to him. So important, he was willing to drag me along. So important, he’d set the Kachina doll on his dashboard like it was a bobble-head.
    I could imagine Ben putting himself in Thom Berger’s place, frantic to find his lost daughter.
    “I don’t know what the Bergers are up to,” I admitted. “I assume you ran a background check?”
    “They’re clean, Nick. Thom married Rebecca seven years ago. She was a nurse at the time, down at Pocono Medical. Graduated from ESU with top grades. Thom’s run the True Value since his old man died twenty-five years ago. Not much for education, but it hasn’t held him back any. They don’t have so much as a parking ticket between them.”
    “Squeaky-clean.”
    “You