Page 69 of Thief of Night
But this time, she had nothing to worry about. She was the investigator, not the criminal who’d be investigated. So Malhar’s desktop would be fine.
Charlie took a still from one of Rooster Argent’s videos and reverse- image-searched his face. Then she scrolled through lots of photos of people who might be him if she squinted. Frustrated, she went to a site that offered a better image search for about fifteen bucks. That yielded more precise results. Rooster at a conference of YouTubers. Lots of photos from his Instagram. And there was one—she clicked through to an abandoned Myspace page of a fifteen-year-old named Dave Pugliese.
Gotcha.
Dave Pugliese graduated from Holyoke High School in 2013—there was a photo in the yearbook. He was arrested for criminal trespass in 2015, then seemed to disappear. Six years later, Rooster Argent arrived on the scene, already a gloamist.
But it was Dave Pugliese who’d bought a penthouse apartment in an old building near the center of Northampton.
Charlie stood. “We should go.”
Malhar let out a sigh from where he was attempting to create a maze that led to a blood-soaked tissue. “You could leave it here overnight. I could observe it some more. See if it communicates more readily with less distraction.”
Red shook his head.
“You don’t think it’s safe?” Malhar said.
Red gave him a look. “Absolutely not.”
Charlie was only halfway paying attention.I have had a great deal of blood from many people, living and dead, and I care nothing for most of them.Red had said that earlier. The Blight in the cage had been focused on her finger. “Maybe the motive was simple. Maybe the killer—maybe Rooster—just wanted a much more powerful shadow. Wanted the blood. Didn’t Balthazar imply there was some kind of conflict between him and Mr. Punch?”
“He said they were opposites,” Red said, leaving her unsure if he was agreeing or not.
On the way out, she saw Aron sitting on the couch outside the house with an enormous water bong resting on the ground in front of him. He struggled with a matchbook.
“You want a hit?” he offered, then blinked at Red. He must have wondered how he’d missed a large guy like that showing up.
“I’m good,” she told Aron, stepping off the porch in the direction of the car. Halfway to it, Charlie met her sister, walking up the path.
Posey jerked to a stop. “What are you doing here?”
Charlie studied her, the weight of the duffel bag slung across her body, the timing of her arrival, and the number of times she hadn’t been in her own bed at night recently. “You’ve been sleeping over at Malhar’s place? That’s where you’ve been?”
“I—” Posey began. On the porch, Aron waved and after a moment, she waved vaguely back. She was so busted.
“Malhar’s your boyfriend?”
Posey gave her head a half shake, but seemed to think better of denying it. “We have athing. Which is undefined and also none of your business.”
Hall women made famously bad choices. But Charlie hadn’t seen any warning signs in Malhar, except, of course, that Posey liked him.
“Great,” Charlie said decisively. “He’s got a lot of roommates. We’re moving tomorrow. How about you get your not-quite-a-boyfriend to come and bring them along to help?”
“I will,” Posey said, but she still looked unhappy. “Now you explain why you didn’t come to me?”
“About what?” Charlie found herself mystified.
“Whatever you wanted to ask Malhar. I’m the gloamist,” she said. “Ask me. I know stuff.”
“Fine,” Charlie said. “Who massacred the people in the basement of the Grace Covenant Church?”
Posey flinched, visibly uncomfortable. “You asked Malharthat?”
“I came here looking for leads,” Charlie told her. “One of my theories was that Blights might have been involved, maybe controlled by a gloamist? I figured Malhar could know something about their habits since that’s his area of study.”
Posey looked more upset, rather than less. “You should leave it alone.”
“Leave what alone?”
