Page 103 of The Flame Game

With Yale handling the pictures, I had confidence the evidence would be appropriately gathered and handled. “Okay. Good. Other Chief Quinn help with cop stuff while I do this. No headset. No safe to put on head. Sad. Headset useful. Also, rabies contagion here. Confirm scanner, not sure where source.”

“I’m going to guess the rodents infesting the place. There’s evidence of mice all around the exterior. We’ll do treatments of all staff and animals we can catch to be safe. We have sufficient evidence of a connection between this and the rabies outbreak to bring it to trial. Once was a coincidence. Three times is not a coincidence,” Clemmends replied, using a long pole and some string to deliver the selfie stick and phone to me. I grabbed the stick in my mouth and pulled it free.

Clemmends wisely dropped the pole, where it would join the dust batch in burning as soon as I finished my work. “All right, Quinn. Show me your stuff, and make it good this time.”

With my mouth full of selfie stick, I couldn’t tell him I was good all of the time, although I shot him a baleful glare before getting to work.

I began with the books on the end table, listening to Yale and Clemmends confirm each time they snapped a good picture of the text. The second book, which I hadn’t checked, horrified me even more than the first.

It contained a list of names, when he had tested the dust on the victim, if they had become infected, and what he had done with their body post infection or failure to infect. I wanted to run out of the building and light my hooves on fire, for I stood on a mass grave.

I set the selfie stick on the book and trotted to the door. “This Morrison handwriting?”

My husband, who worked with Yale and Clemmends at a folding desk on the other side of the cordon around the building, sighed and nodded. “I’ve seen it enough times to know it. Yeah. That’s his handwriting, without a doubt.”

“It good evidence?”

“It’s good evidence.”

“Squish him like mother fucking grape! Squish! Stomp! Burn! Stomp! More stomp. Make Morrison vintage wine with stomping. He kill many. Better I kill, do so quickly and with much stomping. Jail? He die. Maybe with soap in shower by angry burly man. This leave scars.”

“And I now will never look at wine the same way ever again. Thanks, Bailey,” my husband complained. “I liked wine until today.”

I snorted. “You like sniffing wine and sipping here, sipping there. Leave wine to sips. You like sipping wine, and over entire night, you might finish baby glass. Not lose much.”

“Ruthless.”

“Can stomp to goo. Not make wine make goo. But would have goo on hooves, not pleasant.”

“There’s already a warrant out for his apprehension dead or alive,” Clemmends stated. “Frankly, I don’t give a shit if you deal with him, just turn the body into the FBI or CDC when you’re done with his body and leave enough to be recognizable.”

“Leave head intact but squish rest? That gross.”

“You know what? Forget I said anything. Do what you want with him. We have sufficient evidence here to warrant excessive force, and if anyone complains, he is aware of the restraining order and shouldn’t have been in your range to begin with, so it’s his own damned fault for violating his restraining order.”

“I like. Okay. Take stick, explore more. Shout extra loud if I go far and you need take peek-ture.” I retrieved the selfie stick and phone, exploring everything room by room. Several more books and logs of evidence ate away an hour, and when I finally made it down to the basement, I only descended several steps before the sea of little red beady eyes sent me bolting back upstairs.

I ran to the window, dropped the selfie stick, and snorted blue flame. “No. No, no, no. Burn! Burn now.”

“Bailey?” Quinn asked, raising a brow.

“Burn it to the ground!”

“Why?”

“Beady eyes. Millions of beady little eyes. In basement. They get me. Burn it to the ground. Now. Give me nay-palm. Beady eyes.”

Professor Yale laughed, and he wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m guessing there’s a rat or mouse swarm in the basement, she went downstairs, and the light from her flaming breath reflected in their eyes. Honestly, I would have run, too. Go around the rest of the place, and we’ll start getting the hoses ready so you can deal with it. We shouldn’t kill the rats or mice, though.”

“Con-tam-ee-nay-ted,” I insisted.

“If they’re contaminated, why aren’t they petrified?”

I squealed my alarm. “No. No gorgon-rat-mice doohickeys. No. No. No mutant gorgon-rat-mice doohickeys. No.”

My husband sucked in a breath. “It can’t be possible. Rats or mice couldn’t be infected with the gorgon virus, could they?”

“That is something I’d like to test, but I’d need one.”