The tires of my car made a screeching sound as I slammed the brakes on in front of the police station. I got out of the car and threw the main door wide open, and was happy when I saw Petra sitting at her desk. She looked nervous. As she looked at me she shook her head, but before she could speak I slammed the note on her desk.

“Tomorrow,” I said.
She glanced at the note then looked up at me. “Tomorrow?” Her voice held the same surprised tone I had used with Victor.
I nodded. “It’s the answer to the riddle. Tomorrow.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Well now we know the answer that helps us just a little. But what does he mean by ‘tomorrow’?” she said.
I sat down at her desk. “Exactly; but now that we have the answer we can work with it. Although I am afraid of what tomorrow might bring.”

“I agree,” she said. “One thing we can do is run a check on anything related to ‘tomorrow’; date-wise, name-wise, or it could even be something, some organization or business, called Tomorrow.” Her speech was rapid, betraying her excitement. Before I could say anything her fingers were working rapidly on her typewriter. Was she actually making a report on the riddle? It would be just like her; she believed in chronicling anything that was noteworthy to the case in hand; or at least anything she deemed to be noteworthy. She smiled as she looked up at me. “I can see why Dragon spoke so highly about you; you are really good at this,” she said as her fingers still seemed to fly over her keyboard.

Dragon. I still missed him a lot. If he were here today he would have taken me for a drink for old times’ sake; but he was dead now, killed. I touched my chest and felt the horn tip his mother had given me. It was from when he was just a little youngling. She had said that he would have wanted me to have it, and I’d turned it into a necklace so I could keep him close to my heart at all times. As a tear trickled down my face I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. Petra’s was looking at me, concerned.

“You still miss him, don’t you?” she asked.

I stared at the place where his desk had been. It was Petra’s now. I kept telling myself it had been his doing, that he had arranged for someone who would be able to work with me to get his desk. I looked at Petra and snorted. “Yeah. Sometimes I still wish he would be sitting there, twirling his pen between the fingers of his right hand while he cleaned the grime from between his teeth with his left pinky nail.”
“Where to?” She was already almost through the door and didn’t reply. As I caught up with her outside, she sighed and leaned against my car. “Look, Tara; you helped us a bunch, but as of now you are off the case.” She reached into her coat and took out a thick brown envelope. “Here’s the money we owe you. No matter how good you are at this stuff, we won’t need your services any longer.” She handed me the envelope.

Petra nodded. “I understand. But sadly there is no time for that now; we have a girl to find.” She took her coat from the rack and beckoned me to follow as she walked to the door. “You coming?” she asked, a little impatient.

I stared at it for a couple of seconds. “What the fuck are you talking about? Look, you hired me for this case, and it’s not over yet, not by a long shot. That motherfucker called me out by name; he said it would be so sad for me that I could not save the girl. Me, not you or anyone else; he called me out, damn it, and I am not backing away – not now, not ever – until we find the girl either alive or dead. I didn’t find the answer to the riddle only to be told to fuck off after telling you!”

I threw the money back at her and walked away … until I heard the unmistakable click of a cocked revolver behind me.

“Yes, about that: how exactly did you find that out?” I heard her ask, her tone icy. As I turned around I saw her aiming her gun straight at me. “It is peculiar, is it not? You being called out, you getting the piece of rib sent to you, and finding out the answer to the riddle so very quickly?” She spat her words out now, her voice an aggressive hiss.

I stared at her, furious, but knowing that if I went for my gun she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. “What, you think I’m in on this? That I helped him kill those six girls?”
Before she could react my fist had hit her face and she had hit the sidewalk. “If you dare to call Fraza a demon whore one more time I will make you sprout wings so I can tear them off and shove them up your ass until you look like a feather shish kebab. And if you really think I had anything to do with this then get back up and put a bullet through my brain. Otherwise, get the fuck back up and let’s get to finding this girl.”

Petra shrugged. “Why not? You were mad at the police for not realizing one of our own was the one who killed a lot of people – even Dragon – and don’t think we didn’t know the two of you used to fuck, before you went and got yourself possessed by that demon whore.”

She crawled back up and holstered her gun. “You’re a fucking bitch; you know that, don’t you?” she asked, still sounding angry as she wiggled her jaw.

I shrugged. “You get this good by kicking ass, not kissing them,” I replied, flipping her off as I got into my car. I rolled down the window and stuck my head out. “You coming or are you waiting for the world to turn the other way?” I shouted.

Petra glared at me and sighed as she walked to the passenger side and got in, “So where are we going then?” she asked, slamming the door shut.
I looked at her and smiled. “I need a drink and I think you need one too; the best bar in this quarter is the Tinian.”
***

The Tinian was a small, quiet bar based in an old bookstore. The books, which were stored behind glass and a metal grating, were yellowed and moldy; they hadn’t been read in a very long time.

Petra looked around as I sat down at the bar. “Why at the bar and not one of the tables?” she asked, pointing to a free table close to the stairs that led to the second floor of the bar.

I shrugged. “I don’t like the table and besides, Dragon and I had our own bar stools here when we were still partners.”

The bartender looked up and gave me a little smile as he reached under the bar and placed a dusty bottle in front of me. “For the love of fluff, if that isn’t Tara Duluc back in my bar again. I was wondering if this vile bottle would ever be emptied before I died of old age.” He laughed and looked toward Petra. “So what will it be for the little angel?” he asked.

Petra smiled as she sat down next to me. “Sheep liniment, my good man,” she replied, before turning to me and asking, “You know this man?”

I smiled as I nodded and poured the coffee liqueur into the glass the bartender had put in front of me. “Mark and I go back as far as me and Dragon,” I said as I looked over at him. “What did we arrest you for again?”

He smiled and pointed to a framed arrest file. “Serving up piss as sheep liniment,” he said, making Petra’s eyes grow wide as she spat out her drink. “What the hell, man?”she shouted.

Mark burst out in laughter. “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself there, little angel. Don’t worry, I will never serve anything that gross; except maybe for Tara’s nasty liqueur. No, I got arrested for punching an officer,” he replied.

Petra didn’t look convinced. She looked at her glass and then at me and took a careful sip from her drink.
I smiled and shook my head as I poured my glass full again. “I am sorry I hit you. It’s just—”
Before I could finish my sentence she interrupted me. “I understand. It’s just… I don’t know.”

“I understand what you mean. It’s not easy on either of us, thinking we stopped a madman from killing, only to find out we were wrong and there might be another one out there.”
I shook my head. “What I mean is, don’t be sure you will catch the ball until you have.”

I felt her eyes on me. “What do you mean, might be?” she asked as her hand went slowly to her holster again.
Her hand went back to her glass as she sighed. “You know, I don’t know how you deal with all this sometimes.”
“It helps going slowly mad by demonic possession,” I replied.

The rest of the evening we didn’t speak much. For a moment it felt good to be back at this place with someone, even though it wasn’t the person I wanted to be here with. Petra was good company, but the gun she had pulled on me had scared me. Dragon would never have done that; I had trusted him fully and he had trusted me.

At moments like these I had to remind myself I was a freelancer; I had only been hired by the police force, nothing more and nothing less. I was no longer one of them, but still did pretty much the same work as they were doing and they hated that; I was an outside force, one that did the things they would never get into. Things like the case Kendra had been working on; spying on a wife to see if she screwed around. The police thought they were too good for that; that was what the private detectives were for.

But this case was something they would take with both hands, and the fact Petra had gotten me in on it must have frustrated a lot of people. Not that I cared. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered at this moment except finding that girl – whoever and wherever she was. That was the only important thing, it was all that mattered. Still, the answer to the riddle hadn’t helped us get any closer. Tomorrow. I still wasn’t sure how it would help me; it even made me wonder if Victor had been wrong all along.

Next Chapter: An unpleasant visit