Fine Blue Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 4) (22 page)

“Aww, crap,” I heard Meriwether mutter over the buzz of his wings. “That’s Vo. This isn’t good.”

What an understatement. I’d get to him, but first I walked over to the other body. I planted my hands on my hips and stared.

Shay joined me at my side. “Well…we found Lanky.”

I knelt down to get a closer look. He wore the same moth-eaten pants and threadbare coat I remembered. Same long, matted hair. Same bushy beard. It was Lanky, no question about it. But to suggest he was completely unchanged from when I saw him last would be incorrect. There appeared to be new abrasions on the skin of his arms and on his palms, as if someone had scraped it with sandpaper. In addition to that, his clothes had deteriorated. Numerous new tears graced his ensemble, including a number of what appeared to be punctures in his coat and underlying shirt. There must’ve been at least twenty of them.

I plucked at the shirt and stuck the tip of my pinky into one of the holes. It barely fit. Grimacing, I lifted the shirt from Lanky’s waist, revealing a goodly portion of his torso. As expected, small, bloodless incisions covered it.

“Daggers,” said Steele. “Come take a look at this.”

My partner knelt over a miniature claymore about the length of my outstretched hand. At first I thought the thing had been dropped by a heavily armed relative of Meriwether’s, but as I noted its dull edge and cheap construction, I realized it was a letter opener. The width of its blade matched the size of the holes in Lanky’s shirt.

“Don’t touch it,” I said. “Maybe we can get prints off it.”

Shay nodded, and I returned to Vo’s body. Quinto squatted next to it, his face looking much as I imagine mine did, with his brows so furrowed I feared they might knit themselves together. Phillips, meanwhile, stood at the entrance to the room with his arms crossed, no doubt trying to stay out of the way.

Meriwether alighted on the edge of the desk. He cupped his chin in one of his tiny hands and shook his head. “Not good, man. Not good. He didn’t deserve this. He never hurt anybody.”

I squatted next to the body, across from Quinto. “You said his name was Deacon Vo?”

“No,” said Meriwether. “His name was
Cornelius
Vo. Deacon was his title. He was the grand master of our church. At least the local branch.”

I passed my eyes over Vo’s body. He wore an un-monklike pair of black trousers that he’d matched with a checkered grey dress shirt with double cuffs. A few ink splatters dotted the grey cloth, but I didn’t notice any red ones, nor did any blood pool on the floor. I did, however, notice some distinct, uneven bruising around his throat, with the worst spots to either side of his windpipe and farther around the sides. His eyes bulged, and his mouth, which hung half open, contained a swollen tongue.

“Looks like he was strangled to death,” said Quinto.

I nodded as a gleam of something metallic from around his neck caught my eye. I dug a pencil out of my coat pocket and snaked it under the man’s collar, the top button of which was unbuttoned, and used it to draw upon a fine silver chain. Attached to the end was a medallion, perhaps twice as large as the token we’d found on Burly, featuring the now familiar vortex symbol of his church.

I stood, interlacing my hands and wrapping them around the back of my neck, as I stared at the body. “Ok, Meriwether. Walk me through this one more time. When did you hear the commotion?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe half an hour ago, or a little more.”

“And you didn’t hear anything before that, right?”

Meriwether shook his head. “Nope. Told you, I was sleeping.”

“How heavy of a sleeper are you?” I asked. “Would you have heard if someone came in through the front door?”

“Probably,” he said. “But there’s another entrance in back. It’s usually locked, but…”

But maybe it hadn’t been this time. Or maybe someone had a key. “We’ll check it out,” I said. “Does anyone else live here?”

“Nah,” said Meriwether. “Vo had a couple understudies, but they’re volunteers. They hang out a lot, but they don’t live here.”

“And none of them are here now?” I asked.

Meri shook his head.

“Of course not.” I jerked a thumb in Lanky’s direction. “I don’t suppose you recognize that guy?”

“Me?” said the pixie. “You’re the one with the dead hobo fetish.”

Shay joined me at my side.

“See anything I missed?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t really answer that, seeing as I don’t know what’s in that thick head of yours,” she said. “But other than the letter opener and the puncture wounds and the state of Mr. Vo here? Did you notice Lanky’s lower quarter?”

“Huh?” I glanced in the body’s direction. “What about it?”

“His shoes and pants are dirtier than I remember,” said Steele. “As if someone dragged him through a back alley or a muddy lot.”

Someone
—emphasis on one. I made a mental note as I sighed and dropped my hands to my sides.

“Please tell me you have a theory, Daggers,” said Quinto.

I shrugged. “Honestly, big guy? I’m at a total loss.”

“Come on,” said Shay. “That doesn’t sound like the Daggers I know. What ever happened to concocting crazy theories on the fly, regardless of whether or not they make sense? It’s just an exercise, right?”

I wanted to smile. If nothing else, she did pay attention to my investigative advice.

“Ok,” I said. “Maybe…Vo hired Lanky and Burly to do something for him. Something illegal. Perhaps they blackmailed him after the fact. Asked for more money to keep their mouths shut. Vo didn’t like that so he killed them, except Lanky got away. And he had something on his person that would connect him to Vo. Something like that token. So Vo broke into the morgue, stole Lanky’s body, and returned it here. Except…”

I growled and threw my hands in the air. “Damn it, this doesn’t make any sense! It was Burly who had the token on him, not Lanky. Lanky didn’t carry anything connecting him to Vo—not that we know of, anyway. And none of this would explain why Burly’s body was in that street several days after his death, or why someone, likely Vo, mutilated Lanky’s corpse with a letter opener, or why someone strangled Vo to death.”

“Maybe it was a weird form of autoerotic asphyxiation,” said Quinto.

“Please,” I said. “I love creepy, kinky theories as much as the next guy, but he didn’t do this to himself.”

“Maybe someone found out Vo killed the homeless men and came to exact revenge,” said Steele.

Phillips piped up from the doorway. “Yeah. Could’ve been a relative. Or an ex-lover.”

I held up my hands. “Stop it. Just stop it, all of you. We all know my theory has more holes in it than Lanky’s mangled shirt, so stop trying to buttress it up with logic.”

Shay and Quinto exchanged glances and shrugged.

I pressed a hand to my forehead. “Alright. We’ll knock some sense into this, one way or another. Quinto, why don’t you hit Taxation and Revenue and Public Records before they close? Dig up whatever you can on Vo and meet us back at the precinct. Phillips—alert CSU. Get them to go over this office with a fine-toothed comb. In the meantime, Steele and I will check out the rest of the church. See if we can find any additional evidence, and we’ll personally transport the bodies to the morgue. Hopefully Cairny will still be around by the time we get there. Sound good?”

I received a bunch of nods in response. Part of me wanted to gather everyone into a huddle and clap as we dispersed, but I felt that would’ve been a little disrespectful to the dead.

35

The day’s light faded rapidly as we approached the precinct, and whatever god controlled the weather apparently decided we mortals deserved another dose. Wispy strands of mist crept lower and lower through the sky, befriending gargoyles and working their way into the gutters of the taller buildings, and the morning chill which had been banished returned with a vengeance. If not for the fog, I suspected we might suffer the first truly cold night of the season.

I parted ways with Shay at the front of the station. Though we’d found some additional clues on our survey of the Church of the Holy Oblivion—namely that someone had forced open the back door en route to Vo’s office—we hadn’t uncovered anything groundbreaking that exposed the innards of the case for all to see. While she took on the unenviable task of interviewing our sassy, oversexed pixie friend, Meriwether, on anything he might’ve overlooked, I helped move Lanky’s and Vo’s bodies to the morgue.

Luckily, Cairny hadn’t yet vanished. I found her sitting at a desk at the far end of the examination room, filling out forms.

She looked up as I and the herd of bluecoats under my wing entered, all of us stamping our feet and depositing debris over the clean floor.

She stood and shook her head. “Oh, no.”

“Hey, don’t give me that,” I said as I crossed the room to meet her. “You signed on for this. Don’t act frustrated because we brought in more work for you right around closing time.”

“I was more concerned about the fact that people keep dying,” said Cairny.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, on the bright side, one of them isn’t new. We found Lanky, our corpse from yesterday morning.”

The beat cops deposited Lanky and Vo onto a pair of adjacent exam tables, removing them from the heavy, black leather bags we used to transport them as they did so.

Phillips lingered among the bluecoat crew. As he left, I called out to him. “Phillips! Don’t forget to record the drop off on the clipboard by the door.”

The young guy shot me a familiar hand sign—his index finger and thumb pressed together into a circle and the rest of the fingers splayed out. It was either the universal sign for ‘You got it’ or a crude representation of a sphincter. I hoped he meant it as the former.

I clapped my hands and rubbed them together as I approached Vo’s body. “Alright, Cairny. Let’s do this.”

“Let’s?”
she said.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “I need answers, and the sooner I get them the better. So…chop-chop.”

Cairny glided to a brushed steel cabinet on the side of the room, drawing open one of the drawers and extracting a pair of delicate white gloves. She slid them onto her hands before joining me.

“First of all, Daggers,” she said, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m getting rather sick of seeing your face in my morgue. Don’t you have other avenues to pursue?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” I asked.

Cairny proceeded as if I hadn’t spoken. “And second of all, you know it takes me time to perform my examinations. There’s no way I’ll be able to give you a report on both of the bodies before I head home for the evening. I’d need to put in serious overtime hours to finish
one
of them.”

“I know,” I said. “Just because I put in long hours doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to make the same sacrifice.”

Cairny peered at me with a narrowed eye and a raised brow. “That’s a joke, right?”

“More of a white lie,” I said. “I prefer to seed the work environment with rumors of my herculean efforts and productivity. Who knows? Maybe word of it will reach the Captain’s ears and he’ll buck the trend of handing me single digit salary increases at year’s end. The point is, I don’t expect you to stay here all night carving up bodies in the name of justice—although, let’s be honest, you’d probably enjoy it. I just need a few hints. Some clues to help me piece this thing together. You can do that right? Should be a breeze for someone as sophisticated and experienced as you.”

Cairny raised her other eyebrow. “So, since lying didn’t work, you’re trying flattery?”

She’d picked up on it. Apparently, dating Quinto had improved her social skills. “Hey, whatever works, right?”

“What do you need, Daggers?” she asked.

“Alright. First. This guy. His name’s Cornelius Vo.” I pointed at him. “We think he was strangled. Can you confirm?”

Cairny pressed a hand to Vo’s chin, tilting his head to the side so she could better gaze upon his neck. “I’d say choked, but yes. Whether or not it killed him is another matter.”

“Choked?” I asked. “Is there a difference?”

“From a semantic perspective, no,” said Cairny, still looking at the bruising. “But to me, strangulation implies the use of a cord or wire or other object, whereas choking is most often performed with the hands, as was clearly the case here.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. “So what can you tell me about it?”

“Whoever strangled him had large, strong hands.”

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t be snide.”

“I’m not,” said Cairny. “Daggers, you seem to think I’m a miracle worker, but that’s not how I operate. Are you even familiar with the scientific method?”

Not wanting to be lectured, I ignored her and plowed forth. “Do you think you could pull prints off his neck?”

Cairny scrunched her lips. “Doubtful, but I can try. Body heat, moisture, and excreted oils all tend to deteriorate the quality of a fingerprint, making it exceptionally hard to pull one from skin. Your only saving grace may be the age of the print. I’m guessing this man didn’t die more than, what…a couple hours ago?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Right. So with luck, I might get something.” Cairny cleared her throat. “Assuming, of course, that I get some peace and quiet in which to work.”

“Hey, I can take a hint,” I said. “Just answer me one quick question about Lanky before I go.”

I moved over to the exam table on which the tall guy lay and rummaged underneath it for the evidence bags I’d seen the bluecoats deposit. I found the one I wanted and slid the contents out on the table beside Lanky’s corpse.

“This is a letter opener we found at the scene,” I said. “It looks as if it was used to stab Lanky’s corpse at least two dozen times.”

Cairny eyed it as she stepped to the side of the table. “And?”

“Well, can you confirm the wounds were inflicted by this letter opener? And that they’re post mortem?” I don’t even know why I added that last part. I hadn’t peeked under Lanky clothes yesterday, but I think I would’ve noticed the holes in his shirt.

Cairny took a glance under Lanky’s vestments. “Yes. Due to blood coagulation, the wounds are clearly post mortem.”