Dead Man in a Ditch

by Luke Arnold

  Somebody had gone into the building while I was away and made all the stairs different sizes. I stopped trying to stand upright and crawled up the last flight of steps on all fours.

  I pushed open my office door with the top of my head, slid inside, and collapsed on the floor.

  I looked up at my bed, unable to convince myself that it would be worth the effort to climb into it. Then it moved.

  Two police-issue boots hit the floor beside my face.

  “Oh, golly. Mister, are you all right?”

  I growled a bit of spit out of my lips. The boots went over to my desk and somebody picked up the phone.

  “Detective? He’s back… I… I don’t think so.”

  The boots returned to my side and the owner of them got down on his haunches and looked into my face like it was a flat tire.

  “Sir. Detective Simms wants you to accompany me to the police station. We have to get you ready for the trial.”

  “Hgadnatdsalizz…”

  I closed my eyes. His boots squeaked against the floorboards as he went back to the desk.

  “Detective, you better come down here.”

  While he was busy with the phone, I reached into my coat, pulled the machine out of the harness, and pushed it under my bed.

  35

  This is more like it.

  The friendly version of Simms was getting weird. After more than a week away from home, it felt good to be back somewhere familiar: like at the end of the Detective’s steel-capped toes.

  She got a few kicks in and called me a bunch of names and tried to get me up but I just kept laughing like an idiot because I couldn’t make my body do what I wanted it to, even when I bothered to try.

  A couple of heavies dragged me out of there. They’d done it before, so they had practice handling the banisters and stairs with me in their arms.

  At the station, they cut the manacles from my bleeding wrists. I was force-fed coffee and then I got the fire hose. The shock of the water slapped a bit of life back into me. Someone went out and bought a second-hand suit that was too big for my body but cleaner than anything they could find at my place.

  Someone cut my hair, which I thought was hilarious. A nurse shoved some medicine down my throat that had a similar effect to that wake-up powder Tippity had been carrying. Not quite as good, but it did open my eyes.

  I was a prize-show pooch being prepared by a team of groomers. I kept trying to get the thoughts from my head out onto my lips but they wouldn’t come. Not in the right order and not making any sense. Simms pulled back my eyelids and examined them.

  “Get me a quart of whiskey and a pack of Clayfields.”

  “Heavies,” I muttered.

  She slapped me hard. Someone ran off to get the order.

  “I told you to sit tight, Phillips. I asked you not to leave your apartment, and you went and left the city. For over a week. You missed your turn in the witness box but, lucky for you, I’ve convinced the judge to let you speak before she makes her verdict. Let’s be very clear about one thing: you will not screw me on this.”

  She wasn’t just angry. She was worried. More stressed than I’d ever seen her.

  “Simms, I don’t think I can—”

  She slapped me again.

  “You’re going to go up there and you’re going to tell it to the judge just like you told it to me and then I’m going to let you go to bed, all right?”

  I tried to shake my head but someone had replaced it with an overflowing fishbowl.

  She slapped me again.

  “All right?”

  I was staring out of my eyes from five miles away. I must have looked like I’d nodded because when the Clayfields and the whiskey came, she gave them to me. I’ll say this for Simms, she sure knows how to administer the right kind of medicine. It gave me just enough strength to stand on my own two feet.

  We crossed the road from the station to the courthouse and I told myself that it would be better this way. I’d be able to make my explanation to the judge and Simms at the same time and get the whole thing cleared up in one go. Simms wasn’t going to like it no matter how it came out, but at least I’d only have to say it once.

  We were just about to enter the courthouse when I realized that the building was rumbling.

  I asked Simms what the noise was.

  “The crowd.”

  Shit.

  36

  It was worse than I’d expected. Way worse.

  I’d only ever been to court to assist in small, semantic cases of lost-and-found property or weighing in on an argument of who-hit-who-first. When that happened, there was never any audience. Every person in the room was involved in the case.

  That’s what I’d thought I was walking into. But, this? This was theatre.

  There were a hundred people. Maybe more. By missing my appointed day, I’d turned it into a double-feature: key witness and judgment all in one morning.

  Some of the crowd were seated. Plenty were standing. They were all talking over each other, getting louder by the second.

  The judge was a skinny Werewolf seated in a wooden box. Impatience was written on her face as clearly as a billboard.

  Simms and her team of obedient errand boys led me down the aisle to the front of the room and a chair that had been shaped for intentional discomfort. Simms pulled the Clayfield from my lips.

  “Can you string a sentence together?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Good enough for me.”

  She went over to the judge and negotiated the order of events.

  The crowd were from all walks of life. All manner of dress. All species, races and ages. A bunch were there on business: notepads and pencils at the ready. Somebody was sketching me. That was weird. I took out another Clayfield and chewed it, getting ready to piss all over Simms’s perfect little party.

  They brought Tippity in from the back. He looked like I felt: broken down, starved and tired but all dressed up in a stupid second-hand suit and tie. His long gray mane had been cut short and it made him look pathetic. I didn’t feel too bad about that. He might not have done what they were accusing him of, but the guy was still an asshole.

  Simms came over and put a hand on my shoulder, like we were back on the same team, then the judge called for everyone to be quiet.

  “Just tell it to me like you did the first time,” said Simms.

  “You’re going to question me yourself?”

  “Of course.”

  Great.

  The noise dulled to a loud murmur. Tippity tried to kill me with his eyes. Simms stared at the floor. The judge gave a raspy cough and I got ready to make everybody’s day a whole lot more interesting.

  They went through some official statements and ceremonial things that I didn’t pay any attention to. I stood up when everyone else did. When they sat down again, I followed. I repeated some words and nodded my head and agreed to things I barely heard. Finally, Simms took the stage.

  “The witness, Mr Fetch Phillips, is a Man for Hire. I will not lie to the court and say that I have always approved of his methods or his manner or many of the things he has done, but I will tell you this: Fetch Phillips is a simple man. He speaks plain. He speaks true. And I believe he will tell you the truth today.”

  Simms stood at my side and faced the crowd, to give the impression that we were speaking with one voice.

  “Mr Phillips, when did you first learn about the murder of Lance Niles?”

  “When I met him. There was something about the hole in his head that tipped me off.”

  I got some chuckles. Simms didn’t mind. She still thought we were a double act.

  “Mr Phillips is sometimes hired by members of the public to investigate rumors of returning magic.” I almost butted in to correct her, but she was on a roll and I didn’t want to throw off her rhythm. “For that reason, I invited him up to the crime scene to see if any of his cases could shed light on the murder. They could not. But Mr Phillips b
egan investigating on his own because he believed that solving this case might produce a reward. Isn’t that right?”

  I liked this side of her. She had a good little performance going. I wished I wasn’t about to send it all to hell.

  “Sure.”

  “And where did your investigation lead you?”

  “Well, I looked into the different spells that once made fire. I wondered if maybe there was some kind of magic that, while not being the same, might still have some dormant, residual energy. The power of Warlocks and Witches seemed most likely, so I asked around about who might know such things. When I heard about Tippity’s pharmacy, I went over there for a chat.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. He threw a fireball in my face.”

  I got a couple of gasps. Simms was smiling. She asked about the rest of the story and I told it to her just how it came out. The frozen body and the trip out to the church and watching Rick rip open the heads of the long-dead Fae. It was everything Simms wanted me to say and the crowd were eating it up.

  “So, there you have it. This man, Rick Tippity, defiled the bodies of sacred Faeries to extract their magical essence. He harnessed that essence to create terrible weapons, then he used those weapons to freeze his associate Jerome Lees, attack Fetch Phillips and murder Lance Niles.”

  “Well… maybe not.”

  Every head in the room turned to look at me. All except Simms.

  She really, really, really, really didn’t want to ask me a follow-up question but it was hanging there, in the middle of the court, all lit up and shiny with everybody staring at it. She didn’t have a choice.

  Simms reluctantly pushed the words onto her forked tongue.

  “What… what do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m alive. So is Tippity. I had one of his gift bags go off right in my face. He had one blow up next to his nuts. But I’ve still got all my gorgeous features and he’s still standing. What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me that the potion he used on Lance Niles was stronger than what he used on you.”

  “Come on. All Tippity can do is make a little flash of fire. You saw the body, Detective. Whatever killed Lance Niles smashed out two teeth but left the rest in place. It ripped through his cheek but didn’t burn his lips. Whatever did that, it was some real, new kind of power.” I couldn’t look at Simms anymore. I felt too bad about embarrassing her in front of all her friends. I looked at Rick instead. “What Tippity did? It was nothing. A shadow of things that were once great but we all know have been gone for years. The last breath of something better and brighter than all of us. He should still be locked up for being a sad little pain in the ass but he’s no killer. Look at that ferret-faced idiot. He dreams of ever being that interesting.”

  Simms was shaking.

  “But, Jerome. His partner—”

  “Iced himself in an experiment gone wrong, from what I can gather. I’m starting to think that if I hadn’t barged in on Tippity and accused him of this Niles murder, he would have made a similar mistake, burned his pharmacy down with him inside it, and saved us all a lot of bother.”

  Things went a bit mad after that. Simms asked for a moment with the judge and they got into an argument. Tippity got up and tried to make a speech but it was all muddled because he wanted people to know that he didn’t kill Niles but kept proclaiming that he could have if he’d wanted to. The crowd were laughing and jeering and talking amongst themselves.

  Except for one man.

  He was a couple of rows from the front, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a thick black coat. There was something wrong with his face. It was like he’d sustained an injury but the doctor who patched him up had been coming down from a three-day bender.

  He was watching me. Only me. And there was something familiar about him. His smile was split like a crack in the sidewalk. Maybe he just reminded me of the Unicorn: a majestic face that had been changed by something unnatural. Then he stood up, dusted off his coat and picked up his cane.

  I knew where I’d seen him before.

  It was in the alley after leaving the card game. I’d thought that Harold Steeme was following me but it turned out to be this man with a bowler hat and a pipe. He’d changed his headwear but the face, cane and coat were the same.

  He moved out of the crowd, towards the exit. I wanted to scream out, There he is! That’s the real killer! But the room had already fallen to pieces and I would have sounded ridiculous.

  I sat there, stunned, as he weaved his way out of the courthouse.

  A minute later, Simms came over with her hands curled into fists. She couldn’t even look me in the eye.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Phillips. Get the fuck out.”

  I did, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before her lackeys picked me up again and I’d have to go explain myself.

  Outside the courthouse, I searched the crowd for hats and canes but there was no sign of the well-dressed man with the scarred face. I left the babbling horde behind but found another when I came onto Main Street. Some kind of hubbub had brought everyone out into the cold. A few blocks from my front door, I saw the first construction workers. They were wearing matching coveralls that had NC written across the back. They’d opened up one of the old fire lamps and were messing around with the mechanisms inside. Further down the road, one of the lamps had been taken down completely.

  Pedestrians asked each other what was happening and found no answers. The workers responded with things like “just doing my job” or obvious statements like “we’re taking down the lamps”.

  Then two red horns rose up from the rabble. Baxter Thatch stood on a bench and addressed the crowd with a voice like a warm hug.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologize for the inconvenience as we make some changes to the streetlights throughout the city. Over the next few weeks, we will be refitting the lamps so that they can benefit from a new kind of energy that will soon be coming from the Niles Company Power Plant. That’s right, everyone. By the end of winter, the lights of Main Street will be burning once again!”

  Baxter said it like they were expecting us to cheer, but it was too soon. We all needed a moment to understand what was being said. To decide whether we believed it. We were all sucked inside ourselves – thrown back to a place that was part glorious past, part painful present and part unknown, brightening future.

  Main Street would have lights again. The city would have real power. That was good news. Maybe the first good thing that had happened since the world went dark.

  Baxter shook hands and slapped backs, and finally the folks around me let themselves laugh and hug each other.

  A little hope. A bit of change. Progress.

  Suddenly, the day didn’t look so bad. It was a good day to be better. A good day to take the machine out of town and destroy it, just like Victor had asked me to do. A good reason to quit my silly game and go do something real that didn’t require my name on the door. Maybe put on a pair of Niles Company coveralls, slide in with those workers, and build something. Something real. Something that would actually help.

  But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. I went back to my office and got into bed. I slept, and the next time I went out of the house, I still had the machine strapped to my side.

  I didn’t go to the Niles Company and ask for work. I didn’t need to.

  The Niles Company soon came looking for me.

  37

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Dragons!” he said.

  I wanted to punch him.

  “I know you said Dragons. I just don’t understand why you said Dragons.”

  I was trying to keep my cool but the wind was blowing a particularly cold southerly, I hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks, and now some toothless Dwarf had dragged me out west on a job that didn’t make any sense.

  “I heard one,” he said.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I did!”

  “Wh
ere?”

  “Here!”

  He pointed to the silos all around him. This part of town was full of storage houses where businesses would keep produce and materials in bulk. There weren’t many homes or shops and there certainly weren’t any Dragons either.

  “I was right here,” he continued, pointing between his feet, “and I heard it roar. Twice!”

  “And what do you want me to do about it?”

  “Well, I thought you might like that information.”

  I breathed all the air out of my lungs and rubbed my face.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because that’s what you do, right? That’s what they said at the courthouse. You investigate bits of magic that ain’t buggered off yet.”

  He wasn’t the first client to come at me with that idea. Though it was usually phrased more elegantly. In the two weeks since the trial, I’d been fending off all kinds of desperate, hopeless souls.

  “You just thought I’d find this useful, did you?”

  “Well, I imagined it might be worth something.”

  He rubbed his fingers together and raised his eyebrows in a gesture that couldn’t have been more preposterous.

  “You’re kidding. You drag me out in this weather to show me imaginary Dragons and you want me to pay you for the privilege?”

  He had a little grumble about it, then he said, “Fine. I’ll sell this information to the other one, then.”

  “The other what?”

  “Investigator. The lady one.”

  “Sir, do you ever say anything that makes any kind of sense?”

  “Here.”

  He pulled a newspaper clipping out of his pocket and thrust it into my hand like a shiv into my belly.

  I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

  Linda Rosemary – Magical Investigator.

  Unlocking What Was Lost.

  So that was her next grift: ripping off the most desperate citizens by selling them back their own lost hope. I put the clipping in my pocket.