Overbite by Meg Cabot Page B

gotten over what happened to your partner in Berlin, even though he’s perfectly fine now—”
    “Except for missing his face,” Alaric said, with a grunt. Another file hit Holtzman’s desk.
    “This resentment you feel toward Father Henrique is another example,” Holtzman said. “What did the man ever do to you? Nothing. So he botched that exorcism. It was his first one. He was young. Do you know what I did at my first exorcism?”
    “Ran,” Alaric said, at the same time as his boss.
    “That’s exactly right,” Holtzman went on. “It’s extremely frightening to look into the face of evil for the first time.”
    “Not,” Alaric said, “as frightening as looking into the face of a man who has willingly taken a vow of chastity.”
    “That is a bad habit of yours,” Holtzman commented. “Expecting everyone to conform to your standards of behavior.”
    Alaric stared at him. The man was clearly growing senile . . . or had he been hit over the head so many times by escaping yeti that he didn’t know what he was saying.
    “I do not expect Henrique Mauricio to conform to my standards of behavior,” Alaric said. “I expect him not to do things that make me want to pound his face into a bloody pulp. Sadly, every time I meet him, he fails to live up to this expectation.”
    “I understand,” Holtzman said kindly. “And given the circumstances of your upbringing, it sometimes surprises me that you don’t beat more people that you don’t like into bloody pulps. It took me quite some time to dissuade you from indulging in such behavior after I plucked you from the streets as a teenager, if you’ll recall. But there’s still a part of you that becomes quite angry when others don’t conform to your beliefs. I believe that’s why you’re so angry with Meena Harper.”
    Alaric’s head came up with a snap. “I am not angry with Meena Harper.”
    “That is a lie,” Holtzman said. “Why else are you so outraged about a theory she has that, for all we know, could be completely valid? Do you know what I was thinking the other day?”
    “That this building still smells like vomit and school paste? Because it’s true.”
    “If you like Meena so much, you should ask her out on a date.”
    Alaric ducked his head back into the files. “I do not date. And besides, I did ask her over to dinner once. She said no, that it wouldn’t be pro—”
    “What do you mean, you don’t date?” Holtzman looked annoyed. “All single people date. And of course she said no to dinner at your apartment. I wouldn’t come to dinner at your apartment if I was a woman. That’s like the spider asking the fly to step into his web. You truly are an imbe—” Another file landed on the older man’s desk. He snatched it up and said, “Would you stop? I told you, I’ve been through these. There’s nothing there. No commonality whatsoever.”
    “There is,” Alaric said, laying down two more files. “All of them are from out of town.”
    “What do you mean?” Holtzman looked more annoyed than ever.
    “Each of the people in those files was a tourist on vacation in this city when he or she disappeared,” Alaric said. “All of those reports were filed in the missing person’s home state, though the victim actually disappeared here in Manhattan within the last few months. You said you were looking for a commonality. I found it for you.”
    “I beg your pardon,” Holtzman said, his gaze dipping to all the files spread across his desk. “But are you seriously suggesting to me that there is someone out there killing tourists ?”
    “It looks like it,” Alaric said. He thumbed through one file. “Here’s an entire family. The O’Brians from Illinois, a family of five. Last seen by the concierge at their midtown hotel when they asked directions to M&M World. They never checked out. No one seems to have thought anything about it until Mr. O’Brian never showed back up at his job and the kids never returned to school.