“Some kind of new disease?” I ventured.

“No, it was murder. We just don’t know what killed him.”

“How do you know it was murder?”

“Because the witnesses all say so. This was a few days ago up in Anchorage. He was leaving an alehouse, all smiles, when he was ambushed outside. Place called Humpy’s.”

That was enough to draw Oberon’s attention. "Humpy’s? That sounds like it’s hound-friendly! Can we visit?"

The name probably has something to do with salmon, Oberon. Some types of salmon grow humps on their backs right before they spawn.

"Are you really going to crush my beautiful dream with a boring fish fact?"

“I don’t understand, Hal. You’re saying he was killed in public but you don’t know how?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t there. Report says about ten people saw him die, not least of whom was his girlfriend, who stated he was perfectly fine one minute—he looked healthy and hadn’t complained of any problems—and then he began to convulse. After three seconds of that, he fell over onto the sidewalk, his face swelled, and he stopped breathing. Total time from onset of symptoms to death was less than ten seconds. We don’t know of any diseases that can do that.”

“Toxicology?” Granuaile asked.

Hal gave a tight shake of his head. “It’s too early to have the results back yet. They do those tests in five to ten minutes of screen time on TV, but in real life those tests take weeks to months to complete. I know the police are counting on something showing up so they can say he was poisoned, but I’ve never heard of a poison that turns on violent convulsions like a switch. Only thing like that I’ve ever heard of is epilepsy. Mr. Black wasn’t epileptic, was he?”

“No,” I said. “Witnesses said his face swelled up. Is this what he looked like right afterward? Because his skin looks as if he’s been at the bottom of a river for a few days.”

“That photo was taken at the scene, within an hour of his death. No wounds, which is why they’re hanging their hat on the poison theory.”

“I don’t get it. Why were the police so interested in you?”

“Because I’m the counselor of record for one Atticus O’Sullivan, deceased. And when I emailed Mr. Black in the interest of starting a dialogue, I referred to a Mr. O’Sullivan, and the Anchorage police saw that when they went through his in-box in an attempt to get a clue. They asked the Tempe police to speak to me about it, and you can imagine how surprised they were to hear your name associated with a mysterious murder out of state.”

“Detective Kyle Geffert is still on the force, eh?”

“Indeed.”

“How did they connect Kodiak to me? He never kept any of my accounts under the O’Sullivan name, and when I emailed him myself I used an alias account.”

“They made the connection because, right after Mr. Black died, a man with strange tattoos on his head and wearing a ‘hideous cravat’—that’s a direct quote—approached the girlfriend, one Ayesha Salcedo, and he said to her, ‘Mr. Black is dead because of Atticus O’Sullivan. Please make sure he gets this.’ Then he gave her a note. She looked down to read it, and when she looked back up, he was gone.”

I could almost feel the color draining from my face; the room grew unaccountably cold and I felt sick. I knew who the murderer was by the description. “What did the note say?”

Hal flicked a finger at the folder. “It’s the next picture.”

I looked at the next photo and saw a square of paper printed in block letters with purple ink. It said, Atticus. We must talk. Find me. Werner.

“Auugh! I knew it! I had this guy under my sword, Hal, and I let him go!” The mysterious cause of death for Kodiak Black wasn’t a mystery at all. The very essence of his life had been drained from a distance. He had been murdered by Werner Drasche, the arcane lifeleech I had set free in France. Oh, I’d find him, all right, but we weren’t going to have a friendly chat. When you kill a friend of mine just to get my attention, there’s nothing left to say.