what you’re saying is on July 15 there were no city tree trimmers at or around the area of Swan Lake?” Raef was talking into his cell as he paced across his home office.
“That’s correct, Mr. Raef, I see no record of having sent our tree trimmers out to Midtown at all that day.” The city worker’s voice sounded like she was talking to him through a tin can. Hell, with the City of Tulsa Works Department and their crappy budget, that might be true. He glanced at Lauren where she sat at his computer. She looked up at him. He shook his head, and she went back to concentrating on the computer. “Could you double-check your records, ma’am?”
“Certainly. Hold please,” she said.
“I’m on hold. Again.” Raef growled and continued prowling around his office. Finally the tin-can voice returned.
“Sir, I have checked and rechecked our records for that day and the day before. All of our tree-trimming teams were in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood on the fourteenth and the fifteenth of July. I am sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“Yeah, me, too, but thanks,” Raef said, disconnecting. “Struck out,” he told Lauren.
“Well, I think I just hit a home run,” she said, excitement raising her voice.
“How so?” He went to look over her shoulder at the Swan Lake website she had up. She’d clicked into several of the pictures and was studying them intently.
“First, I’ve quit thinking like a grieving sister and started thinking like a landscaper. Those are elms.” Lauren pointed at the picture. “Actually, almost all the larger trees lining the pond are elms.”
“Okay, why is that important?”
“Because of our weather patterns elms are especially susceptible to Dutch elm disease. It can be devastating to them.”
“And?” Raef prompted.
“And the pretty neighborhood around Swan Lake wouldn’t stay pretty if its biggest shade trees withered and died from a nasty, highly contagious fungus. These trees are healthy—strong and soldierlike, as my sister would say. That tells me Midtown has an arborist.”
“A what?”
“Tree doctor. This many elms, old and young, tell me they’ve been well cared for. Hang on, if I remember correctly …” Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she searched and clicked. “And I do! There’s an innovative preventative treatment for Dutch elm disease that needs to be applied in the spring and early summer.” She looked at him. “Mid-July would have been a perfect second-application time.”
“I was calling the right department, but asking the wrong question,” Raef said, but before he punched the city number again, Lauren’s words had him pausing. “He has more souls trapped than just Aubrey’s. I can feel them.”
“He’s a serial killer,” Raef said grimly. “I wonder how many more accidents have happened to people in Tulsa in the past year or so, and how many of them were close to other well-tended groves of trees.” Raef hit the number to the After Moonrise office. “Preston, I need you to get into the database and do a search for me. Deaths ruled as accidental in the past year. I’ll need specifics on the death sites. Pay special attention to details about the trees in the area—like, did the accident happen in Mohawk Park or did someone fall down the stairs at the BOK Arena. I’m interested in the trees, not the structures. Our killer has a connection to trees, might even be a tree doctor. Got it? … Good. Call me back ASAP.” He disconnected and glanced at Lauren.
Even though she was completely focused on the computer she must have felt his look because Lauren said, “I’m already checking arborists in the area. Call the city back.”
Raef did as he was told.
“SO, THE CITY USES three arborists. Chris Melnore, out of Hardscape in Bixbie, Steve Elwood, who has his own tree-trimming business in Broken Arrow, and Dr. Raymond Braggs, who is a professor at TU.” Raef read from the list the public-works director had given him. “All three have serviced Midtown. Murphy’s Law is working well, which means the city had a major computer crash last week, so they don’t have a record of which one of the three might have been to Swan Lake in July. They’re gonna check and see if anyone kept any physical notes, but it’s doubtful that they’ll find anything. It was back in July and this is October.”
“Can’t we just call the three men and ask if he was at Swan Lake that day? We could pretend like we’re calling from the city for, uh, tax records or something like that,” Lauren said.
“We could, but you see how jumpy the guy is already. He jerks Aubrey outta here if she so much as mentions a damn tree. I don’t want him going rabbit on me.”
“Then how do we figure out which one he is?” Lauren rubbed a hand over her face and brushed back a strand of long blond hair.
She looks tired, he thought. Again. I have to remember that this is draining her along with Aubrey.
“Well, we can’t do much until we get the list of accidental deaths from my office. Then we’ll check out the death scene and see if there is any link to a tree doc, and go from there.”
“Or we could print off pictures of each of the three guys and when Aubrey manifests next see if she can point us to one of them.”
“You mean before she screams and gets torn into pieces and part of you gets sucked away with her? No. How ‘bout I try some old-fashioned detective work instead.”
“Aubrey and I can handle it. We’ve been doing this for months.”
“How much longer do you think you two have?” he asked bluntly, his voice a lot colder than he meant it to be.
Her face lost the little color it had had. “I don’t know,” she said listlessly. “I can’t tell because I don’t feel right—don’t feel whole—without Aubrey. So a piece of me is missing whether I’m being drained by a serial killer or not.”
“All right, then, let’s not push it.” He gentled his voice. “You’re tired.”
“I’m always tired.”
“I’ll take you home. You can rest and I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”
“Do you have to?”
Raef raised a brow at her. She looked away and he saw some color in her cheeks. Before he could say anything she seemed to collect herself and turned her eyes back to his. Their gazes met and held.
“I know you have a thing for Aubrey. That’s fine.” Lauren looked away.
“That’s weird,” he said, wishing she’d meet his gaze again. “She’s dead.”
“That’s fine,” she repeated as if he hadn’t spoken. “I don’t want to stay because I want to have sex with you or anything like that.” When he just stared at her, she added, “Not that you’re not an attractive man. You are. Really. Obviously my sister thinks so, and she and I have similar tastes in men.” She pushed a thick strand of blond hair from her face, looked up at him. This time her cheeks were bright pink.
She
