Ghosts of Karnak Read Online Free PDF Page B

took off, somewhere to keep her stuff.”
    “You want me to send Mullins over there, just in case?”
    “No, I’ll take a look myself. Thanks, Felix.”
    “You won’t say that when I tell you about this dead woman.”
    “You do say the sweetest things.”
    Donovan glowered. “I’m hanging up now, Gabriel.” The line went dead, and Donovan’s face, frozen for a split second, fragmented into tiny blue shards, before dissolving away to nothing. Gabriel switched the receiver off and slumped back in his chair. There was a polite knock at the door.
    “Yes, sorry, Henry,” he said, as the door opened. “I was just making a call.”
    “Indeed, sir,” said Henry. He crossed to the table with Gabriel’s breakfast. “I’ll bring you some coffee.”
    Gabriel frowned. “No Bloody Mary?”
    “I fear we’re fresh out of tomato juice, sir.”
    Gabriel narrowed his eyes. He didn’t have the patience to be mollycoddled by his valet. “Henry, I re—”
    “And I’ll prepare one of the motorcars for your trip into town,” said Henry, cutting him off mid-flow.
    “Very well,” sighed Gabriel. “You win. Coffee it is.”
    “Excellent, sir.”
    * * *
    Gabriel had only visited Ginny’s apartment once before, on the cold January day she’d walked back into his life, dragging him out of the boxing ring and right into a whole heap of trouble. He hadn’t paid much attention to the place at the time, having been more concerned with getting her home safely after she’d consumed the best part of a bottle of gin at one of the local bars. He remembered it was situated on a quiet cross street, however, and found it easily enough, noting the familiar flower vendor on the corner.
    He parked his car a little way up the road, avoiding an overflowing trashcan that seemed to have attracted an accompanying heap of garbage sacks. He guessed it was trash collection day in Midtown.
    It was warm out, and he passed a group of children playing marbles in the street, as well as a small café serving coffee to people sitting out at small chrome tables. They hardly noticed him as he breezed past, intent on their own conversations, and he decided it wasn’t worth asking if any of them might have seen Ginny.
    The apartment itself was a basement flat in a crumbling brownstone, one of a row of such properties lining the street. The two flats above showed signs of activity; the silhouette of someone moving about behind the uppermost window, and from the ground floor he could hear the strains of a badly played piano, and people’s voices, raised above the music.
    Ginny’s place, however, looked utterly deserted.
    He walked down the steps, noting the gathered detritus in the lobby by her door. Decaying leaves, pages from an old newspaper, even an empty wine bottle had tumbled down here, tossed around by the wind. They were piled up against the door, suggesting it hadn’t been opened in some time. Abandoned post was wedged in the letterbox, and the faded curtains were drawn shut, meaning he couldn’t peer in through the window.
    Just to be sure, he rapped loudly on the door, listening for any sound of movement within. When no one answered he tried the handle, but the door was firmly locked.
    Despondent, but certain that he hadn’t missed anything, Gabriel decided to leave his car where it was and walk the rest of the way to his apartment. He had to make some more flechettes in the workshop before he went out to meet Donovan that night, and then find something to help take the edge off the pain.

SIX
    “Don’t touch
anything
. Either of you.”
    Donovan grinned as Dr. Vettel led him and Mullins through the labyrinthine corridors of the morgue to where she was keeping the bodies. She’d finally deemed it fitting to carry out an autopsy on the woman they’d found the night before last, Autumn Allen, and was in the midst of examining a male corpse that had been fished out of the river earlier that afternoon.
    He liked Vettel—not in an