Dead Man in a Ditch

by Luke Arnold

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Get back.”

  He swung the bottle and I did as he asked. Then he moved forward till the machine was at his feet. I tried to close the distance while he was looking at it but he slashed out with the bottle again.

  “I said get back.”

  “I am.”

  “Get out of my house!”

  I took a big step backwards and felt the poker under my foot.

  Harold reached down and picked up the machine. It was just like the first time I’d unwrapped it. No instructions needed. His fingers folded around the wooden handle and he considered its weight. Wondered at its purpose. Perhaps he even felt its power.

  That was enough.

  I tucked my foot under the poker and kicked it up towards my hand. It was clumsy, but I managed to catch one end of it. I whipped it around and smashed Harold’s forearm. He dropped the machine back on the carpet and cried out as I kicked him in the chest. His knees buckled and he hit the ground. I stopped myself from punching him. Despite his new exterior, he was a fragile bag of bones underneath.

  His hands were bleeding because he’d fallen on a piece of the broken bottle. For a little old man like him, that was enough of an injury to end the battle.

  “What do you want?”

  I picked up the machine. “I want you to leave.”

  “This is my home.”

  I pointed the end of the pipe right at his face.

  “Not right now, it isn’t. I want you to dry yourself out and come back when you’re sober.”

  He tried to sneer but couldn’t quite manage it.

  “Or what? What are you going to do with that thing?”

  I was hungover and sore and I’d had enough of his high-nosed, rich-boy attitude.

  “I’ll make your head explode, Harold. How does that sound? I’ll push this button and your brand-new face will go to pieces.”

  He scoffed. “That’s impossible.”

  My hand held steady. Suddenly, he wasn’t so certain.

  “You’re right. It is impossible. The magic is all gone. Forever. So, how about I show you a little miracle?”

  “That’s enough.”

  Carissa was in the doorway with her gown wrapped tight around her and the exact expression on her face that no man wants to come home to.

  I tucked the machine into its holster and tried to make myself invisible.

  Harold got up. His hands were covered in blood. He was trying to put words in his mouth: something that would make some kind of sense, but he knew there wasn’t any way to explain himself.

  Instead, he opened his wallet and pulled out a wad of bills. His bloody fingerprints smeared the bronze leaf as he held them out to her, crumpled and pathetic.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Harold took a step forward, arm outstretched, but Carissa made it clear that she wasn’t going to take his meager offering. He was forced to drop the sticky pieces on top of the coffee table.

  “I just… I wanted to pay you back.”

  “Pay me back?”

  “Yes. For what I took.”

  I’m not a smart man. I know nothing about life and less about women, but even I wouldn’t have come out with a clunker like that. You could have filled a hot air balloon with the steam coming out of her ears.

  “What’s in your other pocket, Harold? A hundred years? Are you smuggling a lifetime of memories up your ass? You didn’t steal money, darling. You took meaning, and dignity, and you sold them all for a painted face.”

  Harold kept opening his mouth, hoping the right words would come to him, but they never did. So he sat down.

  “Get up, Harold,” she said. “You’re not staying.”

  “No,” he replied. “I’m not.”

  And there was the crux of it. Some part of her had been waiting for an apology. To see him down on his knees, confessing his sins and mistakes and asking for forgiveness. She might even have given it to him.

  But he wasn’t here for that. He was here to pay her off. To buy her forgiveness so he could walk away in his new body guilt free.

  I thought she might spit in his face. Instead, she just muttered, “Leave. Both of you.”

  Harold looked down at his hands. Carissa closed her eyes. I could almost hear the voice in her head, telling her to wait till he was gone before she let herself cry.

  I put a hand on Harold’s shoulder.

  “Let’s go.”

  He nodded. I helped him up, led him out, and did Mrs Steeme the honor of not looking back.

  Outside, the sunrise hit my eyes like pepper spray. Harold covered his face, not enjoying it any more than I was.

  “You want to get a drink?” he asked.

  What a lunatic. A minute ago, we’d been trying to kill each other. Now he wanted to be my friend. Harold Steeme had a serious problem if he’d forget all that for a drinking buddy.

  “Sure,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  25

  The only place that was open and serving alcohol was a strip-mall dive bar with stale carpet and no windows. The counter had five seats, one keg of warm beer, and a single electric light buzzing over the only other customer: an ancient Cyclops who was asleep with his head in his hands. The barkeep was an old Witch with no teeth and two missing fingers. Harold grabbed a bunch of napkins for his bleeding fingers and ordered himself a pint as if I wasn’t there. I ordered my own. It tasted like it was brewed from the first bit of tap water that comes out the pipes when they haven’t been used in a while.

  Harold sighed. The Cyclops snored. The Witch hiccupped and I wondered if I’d finally found the worst bar in all of Sunder City.

  I didn’t want to talk to Harold. I hated the guy about as much as I hated myself, but it was better than listening to the symphony of bodily functions.

  I took a big gulp of beer and it helped my hangover despite the taste.

  “How you doing, Harold?”

  He sighed again, like I hadn’t heard him the first time.

  “I’m confused. I don’t want to go back to her but I wouldn’t say I’m happy where I am. I know that I just need to wait till I get used to the new way of things, but it takes time to adjust. More time than I have left.”

  “Then why’d you do it?”

  His drink was done. He ordered another. The Witch gave him a wink when she handed it over. His new face seemed to work for some.

  “Because I only knew one woman my whole life. I was happy with that because I thought I had an eternity ahead of me. Commitment is easy when you think you’ll have more than one life to live. I don’t know how you Humans ever managed it. Eighty years, if you’re lucky. Thirty good ones. How do you give that all to one person?”

  Harold was speaking of things outside my realm of expertise. I’d had few lovers. No relationships. But I’d sat at enough bars with similarly troubled men to fake my way through.

  “You’re not the first guy who wanted to screw around on his girl, Harold. That happens. But did you need to spend her savings on a new mug?”

  “Maybe not. Certainly not for the girls. I’m still paying them all anyway. But it makes me feel better about it.”

  “But why do it in secret and let your wife think you were dead? If you hadn’t lied to her, she might have been happy to see you like this again.”

  He licked his lips and some real emotion pushed its way through his renovated face.

  “Because this wasn’t about her. Sure, I’m miserable and the days are long but they’re mine. If I was looking out at a century or two like this, then I’d worry. But I’ve got a decade left, tops. It’s a lonely life but at least it won’t last forever.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like to grow old with Amari. To grow at all with her. I couldn’t imagine getting bored of her voice. Becoming tired of the things that had once delighted me. Hearing her tell a story so many times it made me want to pull my hair out. Knowing her mornin
g breath and her bad moods. Seeing some part of her body that I didn’t find perfect. Being disappointed by her. Embarrassed by her. Disgusted. Looking forward to a moment alone. Wondering what the touch of someone else would be like. Lying to her. Leaving her. I was furious with Harold again. He’d had everything I’d wanted and he’d thrown it all away.

  “That’s a selfish way to live, Harold.”

  “Fine. Who says we aren’t supposed to be selfish? Who says we’re supposed to be anything? Only a fool would look at what’s happened to the world and think that there’s any kind of plan. Nobody is going to care if I spend my last days cuddled up with Carissa or bouncing on top of a whore.” Then he turned and looked at me like he’d only just realized I was there. “Why do you care?”

  “Because despite what happened to the world, there’s still right and wrong.”

  He snickered. “That’s why you do this? Because you believe in right and wrong? I call bullshit on you, buddy. You’re just keeping yourself busy with the little things because the big things are too hard to think about. Just like the rest of us.” He ordered a whiskey to go with his beer. It was turning into quite the breakfast. “Besides, this is better for her. She wasn’t strong enough to do it herself but once she grieves, she’ll know that this was the right thing for both of us.”

  I turned my head away in disgust. Beside me, there was yesterday’s afternoon edition of the Sunder Star. The headline read: “Warlock Chemist Accused of Murder.”

  Harold Steeme was lying to himself. It was obvious from the outside. Unmistakable. He’d written a version of events inside his head and he was holding onto them so he wouldn’t have to admit what a mistake he’d made.

  But he wasn’t the only one.

  I’d tried to distract myself with the Steeme case but now that it was over, I couldn’t hide from the lie I’d been telling myself.

  I’d put a man behind bars. At the time, I’d believed it was for all the right reasons. But now? Now, I had a killing machine strapped to my chest. Now a man in a black suit and a bowler hat was wandering the streets.

  None of it made sense anymore, no matter how much I wanted it to.

  I needed to talk to Rick Tippity.

  26

  Tippity wasn’t where I’d left him, in his cell downtown. He wasn’t up at the station either. I stopped by Richie’s desk to find out what was going on.

  “He’s down in the Gullet.”

  “What’s the Gullet?”

  “A new prison the Mayor’s been building. A special set of cells for troublesome crims.”

  It was the first I’d heard of it. In a city without enough food, employment or public services, paying for a new prison should have been lower on the list of priorities.

  “Why the hell are we making new prisons?”

  “Because bums like you are filling everybody’s heads with monsters. When you and I were Shepherds, even if people weren’t any safer, the Opus made people feel like they were safer. I remember telling you once that the way people perceive you can be just as important as the work you actually do. Now everyone thinks they’re on their own, hiding from creatures that don’t have names yet. The Mayor wants us to look like we’re back in control.”

  It’s true that rumors scare people more than reality. If people on the street were hearing stories about undead Vampires coming back to Sunder and biting off the heads of little girls, folks would want to know that the city had some kind of response.

  Their response was the Gullet. Nothing but a dirty hole to throw strange and unpredictable criminals into. It was an old grain silo on the north-eastern side of town that had been given an unflattering makeover. They’d cut a door in the side, reinforced it with recycled steel, ripped up the floor, dug down into the clay, and built a few impenetrable cages at the bottom. It was a slap-dash effort thrown together as a publicity stunt, completed just in time for a deranged Warlock to shoot some magic from his fingers and an over-eager Man for Hire to drag him to the cops’ front door.

  When I arrived, Simms was out front talking to a couple of prison guards. She saw me, and there was nothing but frustration on her face. At least we didn’t need to fake the animosity this time.

  “I told you to stay put. You look like shit.”

  “Don’t say that. I’ve been moisturizing and everything.”

  “Did you see a doctor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “To buy a hat. Where’s Tippity?”

  “In the hole.”

  “I wanna see him.”

  She actually laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. We bonded on the road. What can I say? I miss him.”

  She wasn’t having any of my cracks but our newly formed almost-friendship stopped her from dismissing me completely. Instead, she told her subordinates to give us some space.

  “Fetch, you shouldn’t be here. This is a murder investigation. I’ll come to you before the trial so we can talk about your testimony but I don’t want you doing anything stupid that could fuck up the case.”

  “Like what?”

  “With you, I can’t even imagine. You antagonize the prisoner? Tell him something you shouldn’t? Slap him around? We have him. Things are playing out just the way they should. Go home. Get some sleep. Wait for my call. That’s what I paid you for.”

  I looked up at the silo. It was a mixture of metal, stone and wood supposed to look impregnable. There was one heavy door and no windows. Some jails were created for necessity. Some for punishment. This one was created as a warning.

  “Simms, what if he didn’t do it?”

  Her mouth fell open in shock but her long fangs and black spit made it look menacing.

  “You’re the one who brought him in!”

  “I know.”

  “You saw the frozen Warlock.”

  “I did.”

  “And Tippity confessed to that killing.”

  “In a way.”

  “You saw him desecrating bodies with your own eyes!”

  “Yep.”

  “And he used the magic from those bodies to burn you, and himself. Didn’t you say that?”

  “I did.”

  “So what’s the fucking issue here, Fetch?”

  “Nothing. As long as he’s the one who killed Lance Niles.”

  She spat into the mud.

  “Fetch, I hired you to find Niles’s killer. A killer who used magic. You brought in a Warlock with a pocketful of fireballs: the first spells we’ve seen in six years. Now you want to question whether we’ve got the right guy?”

  “Not question. Just confirm. It would really help me sleep.”

  She was a better cop that she wanted to be. A bad cop would have sent me home. A bad cop would have held onto that nice story she had in her hands. But a good cop cares about the truth.

  “Damn it, Fetch. You’ve got five minutes.”

  It wasn’t as dark inside the Gullet as I thought it would be. That’s because there was no roof. The top was left open, making it colder, wetter, crueler in its design.

  The stairs were stone and unfinished, leading down without a rail to the eight cells in the center of the room. Six were empty. One was still under construction. The other was home to Rick Tippity.

  He was sitting on the floor, in the mud, and his previously well-maintained hair was slick and brown. His glasses were smeared to uselessness. He had a white and black beard coming in but his eyes were the same. Indignant. Superior. Patient.

  A guard waited at the bottom. He had an umbrella and boots but was otherwise condemned to the same punishment as the prisoner.

  “Don’t get too close,” he said, and I tried not to roll my eyes. Without his little leather pouches, Tippity was harmless. He looked at me over his dirty glasses with cold and unflinching hate.

  “Hey, Rick. I like the new digs.” I waited for him to respond but the bastard didn’t even blink. “I assume they’re keeping you here till the trial. T
he trial in which you stand accused of a whole number of awful crimes. A trial in which, along with a barrel-load of physical evidence, I’ve been called as the key witness against you.”

  His left cheek gave an involuntary twitch. I continued.

  “I saw you cut open the heads of the Faeries, Rick. I—”

  “They were already dead, you piece of shit.”

  At least he was talking.

  “Let me finish. I saw you cut open the remains of those Faeries. I saw your frozen partner in the back room, trapped in a scream. I lost both my eyebrows to one of those little packs of magic you carry around with you. But I didn’t see you kill anyone. You tried to kill me, I suppose. If you’d hit me a little harder on the top of my head, you might’ve succeeded. And if you’d mixed up your potion a bit better, you might have burned my face off at the beginning of this mess and saved us both a lot of hassle. But that didn’t happen, did it? When the bomb exploded in your pocket, it didn’t even blow your balls off. So, either the last two fireballs were considerably less powerful than the one you used to open up Lance Niles’s head or things aren’t adding up the way we want them to.”

  Tippity couldn’t work out my angle. He must have thought I was preparing for the trial: working out how to trip up his defense before he made it on the stand.

  “What are you asking me?”

  “I’m asking you how powerful your magic really is.”

  He wanted to talk. We were on his favorite subject, but he knew that he needed to be careful.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Come on, Rick. You talked a big game on the way back to the city but I never saw anything to back it up. Are you really sitting in this shithole because of a little powder-puff of Faery dust? Don’t tell me all those speeches were just about a little light and color.” He was literally biting his tongue. “It will be a sad day for all of us if I have to go on the stand and tell them that this whole mess was just a Warlock setting off sparks.”

  “It depends on the source, you idiot.”

  Here we go.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There are hundreds of species of Faery, each with their own history, talents and connection to the sacred river. Sentient pieces of fire, forest and air that walked upon the world. Each one of them contained a different chemical make-up. Therefore, it makes sense, does it not, that their essence would react differently when released?”