Fine Blue Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 4) (21 page)

Steele slipped past Quinto and disappeared up the stairs, which prompted the big guy to toss Mark to the ground and gesture for him to join the bench mob. Despite their compliance with my demands, the foreigners and half-breeds didn’t stop their yammering, asking questions and begging me for mercy—or so I assumed. Again, I didn’t understand half of what most of them were saying.

“Quiet! All of you!” I waved my nightstick around in a threatening manner, hoping the whistle of steel cutting through the air would supplant their voices.

It more or less worked. The shouts and cries degenerated into concerned mumbles and angry glares shot in my direction. I walked to the desk and grabbed the slip of paper with the orc’s fresh thumbprint on it. Shay’s eyes hadn’t deceived her. It
was
an immigration permit—or would be once it went through a few more printing and embossing steps.

I’d never heard of anyone forging them, but it made sense. Even though the government didn’t charge to hand them to immigrants, it did, on occasion, refuse to issue them to those with mental health concerns or obvious criminal backgrounds. In addition, issuance of an immigration permit alerted the tax collectors to one’s presence, and I could see the allure of remaining off the books in that regard.

I snapped a mental finger and shot a glance at the printing press. Once I knew what to look for, I spotted it right away. Behind the placards. A big stack of folded brown paper bags. Well, that explained the takeout orders.

I squinted into the furthest reaches of the basement. Something I hadn’t noticed at first twinkled in the lantern light. Something rusty and metallic. A copper brew kettle. Three of them, to be precise.

Imagine that. Apparently, the deli wasn’t
purely
a front for illegal activity. If only the sandwiches had lived up to the level of the beer, perhaps my overactive imagination wouldn’t have led me here on an unfounded witch-hunt—of which, clearly, this had been, unless I miraculously found a tertiary hobo butchering business in another secret basement located underneath this one.

My charges didn’t allow me much time to indulge in my disappointment, constantly testing the limits of my watchfulness and trying to wander off. If only I could’ve traded my nightstick for a crook and a border collie…

Eventually, Shay returned with a cluster of beat cops, and we began the slog of tagging and processing everyone, loading them onto a paddy wagon, sweeping the deli for evidence that might help us locate previously issued forged permits, impounding equipment, and the myriad other mundane tasks that made me remember why I loved my job in homicide so much.

After an hour or two of work, Steele, Quinto, and I trudged our way back to the precinct, no richer in knowledge regarding our case than when we’d left. I half expected Shay to razz me over my ridiculous black market beef theory as we walked, but instead she stayed silent. Perhaps she thought I’d suffered enough throughout the day already, or she simply didn’t want to engage me in idle chitchat unless absolutely necessary.

As we pushed into the station’s interior, I eyed my desk and well worn chair with longing, but the Captain harbored no sympathy for my back or feet. He intercepted us before we’d made it even halfway through the pit.

“Daggers. Steele. Quinto. What are you doing here?” he asked.

“What do you mean, sir?” asked Steele. “We just finished a raid at—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” he barked. “I heard. But I sent a runner after you three about ten minutes ago. Didn’t he find you?”

We shared blank looks among our detective triumvirate.

“Figures,” said the Captain. “I don’t even know why I pay those urchins.”

“He probably just missed us,” said Shay.

He eyed her warily. “You’re too trusting, but maybe that’s a good quality. Anyway, don’t stand here wasting space. Go on. Get back up there.”

“Where?” I asked. “The Deli?”

“The Delta district,” said the bulldog. “There’s been another incident. No, don’t ask. I don’t have the details. Just get your butts to 37
^th
and Fairweather. And get me some damn answers! There are only so many transients that can get axed in one district before someone starts breathing down my neck.”

What my butt really wanted was a nice long break in my preferred resting spot at my desk, but I didn’t think the Captain would appreciate me putting the needs of my posterior before that of the department, so with a resigned sigh, I performed an about face and headed back out.

33

Our feet carried us toward the Captain’s prescribed destination, an intersection farther northeast than either of our previous crime scenes but still within a stone’s throw of the DEITA station. Though Shay continued her vow of silence, Quinto apparently decided I’d been handled with kid gloves for long enough. He peppered me with questions the entire walk up, mostly regarding the circumstances of Burly’s discovery, seeing as he’d missed out on that. Despite my initial reticence, it felt good to talk. If nothing else, Quinto’s barrage prevented my psyche from crawling back into one of the dark holes inside me.

As we reached the intersection in question, I realized the Captain hadn’t explicitly told us where we were heading, or for that matter, what we should look for. As luck would have it, however, we weren’t the first members of the city’s finest at the scene. I spotted Phillips nodding and mumbling to himself under a black striped awning at the front of a long, narrow building, one with arched windows and a subdued gothic feel.

“Phillips!” I called.

The young beat cop spotted us and waved us over. “Hey, Detective Daggers. Good to see you. You, too, Steele and Quinto.”

I think the young guy meant it, despite my harsher than necessary treatment of him yesterday morning. One of the best parts of youth was the body’s speed of recovery, both mentally as well as physically.

“So,” I asked. “What’s the deal here? We didn’t get a whole lot of details before the Captain ran us out the door with a switch.”

“Not sure,” said Phillips. “I arrived a couple minutes ago myself. I’ve been trying to get a statement out of the bystander who alerted the runner.”

“Oh. Great.” I took a look around. “And, uh…where is this witness?”

I heard a high-pitched, piqued voice. “Over here, dimwit.”

I tracked the source of the sass to a windowsill in front of me, upon which perched a ten-inch tall homunculus with translucent wings roughly as wide as it was tall.

A pixie. Wonderful.

I’d harbored a high level of distaste for the diminutive, winged prats ever since a childhood taunting incident involving a pack of them, a beehive, my hair, and about a cup’s worth of refined sugar, but even if didn’t suffer childhood nightmares because of them, I’d probably have disliked them anyway. The buzzing of their wings made them sound like enormous flies, and as a species, they tended to be brash, loquacious, and cheeky. I sometimes wondered if their abrasive personalities were a result of extreme short man syndrome, but then again, they could fly, which I’d be pretty jazzed about if I were one.

The pixie who’d spoken sat cross-legged on the stone sill, eyeing me with disdain. It—I couldn’t determine its gender right off the bat—wore a billowing black shirt over matching pants. Its shoes, also black, sparkled as if with glitter, and fingerless gloves of a predictable color partially concealed its hands. Surprisingly, however, the creature sported a bright shock of blue hair.

I found my voice after scowling at the miniature winged person for a few seconds. “And…you are?”

“Meriwether Angelsdust,” it said, which didn’t particularly help me in the gender determination department. “Now are you going to stand and gawk or are you going to help?”

“What seems to be the problem?” asked Steele, stepping forward.

Meriwether finally noticed my partner. “Hey, hey, hot stuff. Who died and sent me to heaven?”

It flipped its hair to the side and smiled—or, rather,
he
did. I think my gender question had been answered.

“I’m, uh…flattered by your interest,” said Shay, “but in case you missed it, I’m a detective, too. I’m here in a professional role.”

“Hey, that’s cool, baby,” said Meriwether. “I love
roleplay.”

Quinto eyed Phillips and jerked a thumb at Meriwether. “Is this guy for real? Where’d you find him?”

“Hey, I live here, asshole,” said the pixie.

“Alright,” I said, holding my hands up. “I know I’m the most unlikely source of reason among the lot of us, but why don’t we calm down and start over fresh. Meriwether—you sent a runner for help, right? So what’s the problem?”

The pixie rolled his eyes and snorted. “Fine. I was inside, snoozing, when I heard this loud thumping and—”

“Hold on,” I said. “You live here? What is this place?”

“This?” said Meriwether, pointing at the building. “Church of the Holy Oblivion.”

“Church of the…?” I stopped myself before I completed the statement. I remembered the last time I inadvertently let my tongue flap over at the place with the trees for a ceiling, and I didn’t want to get the same sort of rambling religious spiel from a woebegone pixie. “You live in a church? Don’t tell me you’re a pastor.”

“Me?” said Meriwether. “Nah. I just live and work here.”

We all gave him looks with varying degrees of confusion.

“Hey, it’s different, ok?” he said. “I pick up trash and dust in the hard to reach portions of the rafters. In return, they let me stay here rent free.”

“So what happened?” asked Steele.

“Well,” said Meriwether, “as I was saying before Inspector Peabrain over here interrupted, I was sleeping inside when crashes and screams woke me. Coming from the direction of the reflection rooms and sleeping quarters—you know, for the humans. Again, I sleep in the rafters.”

“You were sleeping during the day?” asked Quinto.

“Hello?” said the pixie, showing off his garb. “Church of the Holy
Oblivion?
We get most of our patrons at night. And it’s not like I give the sermons, anyway.”

“So, was there a fight?” I asked. “Is anyone hurt? Did someone murder a hobo?”

“Murder a hobo?”
Meriwether gave me the fisheye. “Is that what gets you off?”

My patience wore thin. “It’s been a thing, lately. Now, out with it. What happened? In fact, why are we standing out here? Why don’t you show us?”

“Help yourself,” said Meriwether. “I’m staying right here where it’s safe.”

I felt a rush of adrenaline. “Wait…is there still someone in there?”

Meriwether shrugged. “How would I know?”

“Are you saying you didn’t go investigate?” said Quinto. “That you don’t even know what happened?”

Meriwether scoffed. “What a stupid, big guy thing to say. Of course not. One errant footstep or flailing slap and I’m dog food. Look, I heard noises and screams. I got the hell out. End of story.”

I sighed and pressed a hand to my forehead. Despite my aching feet, I’d been somewhat eager at the prospect of another murder—not because I relished in the slaying of vagrants, but because it might help shed light on an otherwise murky case. But the more Meriwether flapped his gums, the more convinced I became his experiences were likely as not the product of a wayward alley cat knocking over some trash cans.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said. “Meriwether, you’re coming with us—and don’t give me any guff. It’s so you can show us where you
thought
you heard the commotion. If you somehow get ground under a boot heel in the few short moments it takes to do that, then I’m sure the police department will deliver a kind letter to your next of kin.”

Meriwether grumbled, but I think he realized if he didn’t help us, we wouldn’t secure the building that served as his home, so he acquiesced.

Together, we pushed into the chapel, which was as austere and depressing as you might expect from a church with the name of the Holy Oblivion. Lacquered pine benches lined a thin aisle, culminating at a narrow pulpit painted in black, but it was the emblem behind the pulpit that caught my eye.

“Um, Daggers…” said Steele.

“I see it.” I dug the token out of my pocket and held it at arms length in front of my face to could compare it to the wall design. The two mirrored each other perfectly—geometrically-designed vortices swirling around central circles.

“Hey,” said Meriwether. “You’ve got one of our oblivion mementos. And here I thought you weren’t familiar with our religion.”

“Where did you hear these noises and screams from, again?” I asked.

“In back,” said Meriwether. “Upstairs, I think. From the direction of Deacon Vo’s office.”

“Show us,” I said.

The pixie led us past the pulpit, up a flight of stairs, and down a corridor, but as an open doorway pulled within view, he zipped past to hide behind us.

“That’s Vo’s office,” he said. “His door’s usually locked.”

If any screams and thumps had echoed down the hall earlier in the day, they’d long since disappeared. All I heard now was the buzzing of Meriwether’s wings and the beating of my own heart. Nonetheless, I pulled Daisy from my coat and gripped her tightly before stepping into the open doorway.

My jaw nearly hit the floor. What
the hell
was going on?

34

The office was a mess. Papers littered the surface of a wide, unembellished oaken desk, and ink from an overturned bottle ran across its surface, soaking the pages and dripping onto the floor like the blood of the damned. An overturned bookshelf vomited tomes of varying shapes and sizes onto the floor, the latter of which languished alongside shards of glass from broken windows that gleamed in the light of the late afternoon sun. Pieces of what might’ve once been a chair peeked out like gophers from between the carnage, but it was the centerpiece of the room that drew my attention.

Two bodies sprawled on the polished wood underfoot, not more than three or four feet from each other. The first belonged to a man in his late forties or early fifties, short in stature, with close-cropped black hair and almond eyed.