Page 121 of Dead Beat

“This isn’t…” Montrose sputtered. “You can’t—”

Darlington offered him a sheepish look. “I’m sorry. But this is only a formality. Just a few things to get sorted.”

Montrose had never met Darlington, did not know how different this was from his usual manner. The downside of a short institutional memory. The previous delegations could have warned him that this Virgil did not simper. But he and Turner had agreed that tonight he would play the deferential man of Lethe.

Montrose scrambled after Turner, leaving Darlington behind in the empty kitchen. He knelt and laid a hand on the jackal’s silken head. The Lethe hounds looked more like the jackals painted on the walls of ancient tombs than their modern cousins, sleek and black, long of ear and snout.

He pulled the photo Turner had given him from his pocket, not the image of Kylie Sanz in death but one her mother had provided to the department—sunburned shoulders, an open-mouthed smile, her fingers held up in a peace sign. A girl alive. He hoped it would be enough.

When he released the lead, the jackal became as invisible to him as it was to anyone else. He heard its paws patter down the hall.

Darlington hurried to catch up to Turner and Montrose, passing through the frescoed anterooms and a dining room crowded with animal heads and portraits of past members. He joined them in the Firefly Room, named for a time when delegates had gathered here to smoke cigars, their tips glowing like fireflies in the gloom.

He had always found the Bones tomb disappointing in its ambiance. The frescoes and memento mori added a certain macabre air; the rooms upstairs were lined with jars of viscera, the most valuable stored away in the old vault. But there was a lack of grandeur and thematic organization, which didn’t match up to the society’s prestige. The ritual room was located in a catacomb beneath the courtyard garden. It was a reassembled temple transported from southern Greece and dedicated to Eutopia, but it was anchored by a giant ziggurat made of amber that held a Roman sarcophagus found near Hadrian’s Villa. The delegates went by names like Demosthenes, Odin, and Baal, as if they’d been drawn out of a mytho-historical hat. They’d been the first society and so they’d built as they went, but possible murder aside, the muddled potpourri of references made Darlington want to knock the whole thing down and force them to start over.

The other members of the current delegation were straggling in, exchanging casual greetings. It was clear they hadn’t taken the meeting seriously, just as Montrose hadn’t before Turner introduced himself.

“Everyone settle,” Montrose said as the delegates claimed armchairs and spots on the floor. “We have not only Virgil with us tonight, but Centurion as well.”

Everyone stilled. It was as if the delegation president had fired a warning shot in the air. The societies dealt with Dante and Virgil, rarely with Oculus, and never with Centurion, the most direct connection to the people of New Haven. All part of the illusion of accountability.

Turner took a stack of index cards from his pocket. “Hand these around. You’ll need something to write with.”

Montrose motioned to Wally Chu, and the editor of the Daily popped up to retrieve a canister of pens from one of the cabinets.

Turner sat comfortably in a chair by the fire, but Darlington stayed standing.

“This is simple,” the detective said. “I’d like to know where all of you were last Tuesday and Wednesday. You can be brief, but I want a complete timeline.” Their glances pinged around the room. “Write it down. With your names.”

Janey Sarkissian, a political science major and probable valedictorian, said, “Is this binding in some way?”

“Are you planning to lie?” Turner asked.

Montrose leaned forward. “Are we being interrogated?”

“If this were an interrogation, we’d be down at the station, and I’d have to read you your rights. Surely all you future federal prosecutors and Supreme Court justices know that, though.”

“If we can just answer the detective’s questions, we can lay this all to rest,” Darlington said.

“But what is this about?” insisted Montrose.

“Nothing,” Darlington said. “Just paperwork.”

“A dead girl,” said Turner.

It was a grenade thrown into the room. Everyone should have started talking at once. Montrose should have been on his feet. But they all went quiet.

“You think we had something to do with a murder?” Janey asked.

“I didn’t say murder,” Turner said. “Accidents happen all the time.”

Silence again.

Wally raised his hand. “I don’t think this is appropriate. We should have lawyers here or the alumni or something.”

“You’re not suspects,” said Turner. “Although you’re acting like you are.”

“That isn’t fair,” Montrose objected.