“At the risk of going all Professor Higgins on you, people judge you the moment they hear you speak. If you want to be taken seriously by the people in power, you use the words and inflections they use.” Henry had stopped pacing and turned to stare down at Tony sprawled on the couch. “Do you understand?”

“Sure. ’Cept I don’t know who this Higgins dude is.”

A third RCMP constable stuck his head into the kitchen. “Body’s bagged. Coroner’s moving out.” His gaze flicked down to Tony and back up to his fellow officers. “You done?”

“We’re done.” Elson stood, Danvers a second behind him. “If we need anything else, Mr. Foster, we’ll be in touch.”

“Sure.” He stayed where he was until they’d cleared the kitchen, then he went to the door to watch them cross the office. He’d missed the first part of their conversation, but the end of it rose clearly over the chaos.

“. . . and I got to talk to that Lee Nicholas guy you like.”

“Bastard. Did you check for the nipple ring?”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“ ’Cause I’ve got twenty bucks riding on it.”

And the door closed behind them.

Tony supposed it was mildly reassuring that certain members of the RCMP were as shallow as the world at large. Added benefit—should the need arise, he knew how to get on the good side of Constable Danvers. Provided that twenty bucks was pro nipple ring.

Amy mouthed Get your ass over here! at him and he obediently crossed to stand in front of her desk. There was half a grande Caffe Americano tucked between her monitor and the phone, so he assumed Veronica, although nowhere in sight, had made it back from the wilds of downtown Burnaby.

“That’s great, thank you.” She hung up, looked for a moment like she was going to take his hand, and settled instead for lacing silver-tipped fingers together. “You okay?”

Interesting question. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, honestly curious.

“Duh, I don’t know. Maybe because you found a corpse?”

Oh, yeah. He shrugged. “Compared to the corpses we usually get around here, it was pretty anticlimactic.”

“What do you mean, anticlimactic?”

“No chew marks, no demon slime, no attempting to shove twenty feet of intestines made of condoms stuffed with spaghetti sauce back into the body . . .”

“Eww.” Amy tossed a crumpled piece of paper at his head. “This was real, fuckwad!”

“Yeah. It was.” But, sadly, still anticlimactic.

A moment of silence

Amy rubbed her forehead, smudging ink across pale skin. “I never even talked to her, you know? I feel like I should have.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

There was nothing Tony could say to that although he sort of understood.

“Anyway . . .” More rubbing and the ink smudge moved down one side of her nose. “. . . Adam came in while you were with the cops and he wanted me to tell you that Peter’s going to shoot reaction shots this afternoon. Lee first. Mason’s all . . .” She sketched a remarkably sarcastic set of air quotes. “. . . ‘I’m too stressed to work,’ but he hates to think Lee’s getting attention he’s not getting so . . .” She shrugged. “Peter’s hoping Liz’ll have found a close enough match for Nikki by tomorrow that he can pick up today’s schedule.”