by Dan Stout
Wedged between the cobblestones, half covered by the pale gray muck that collects near dumpsters, were broken shards of a glass vial. I waved over the tech and indicated that we’d need a photo. After the pop and fizz of the flashbulb, Jax scooped the shards into an evidence bag, sealing and initialing it. There was the faintest glimmer of liquid on the fragments.
We returned the body to her original position, and I reached for the evidence bag. But Jax extended his arm, keeping the bag out of my grasp as he inspected it.
“There’s no chance this is real,” he said.
He was almost certainly right. That iridescent shimmer was distinctive, but most people had never actually laid eyes on manna, let alone had the means to carry a vial of it.
The mystical liquid that fueled the first industrial revolution had long been thought depleted. The few manna stockpiles that remained were the provenance of the ultra-rich and government-funded sorcerers. At least it had been, until six weeks earlier, when a reserve was discovered outside of Titanshade. Rumor and speculation still swirled around the manna strike, with different theories about how much it might contain, and whether or not there might be more reserves under the ice plains. I did my best to avoid thinking about it: it had also cost me two fingers and the life of a friend.
“Gotta be fake,” I said. Since the manna strike the streets were teeming with knock-offs, hucksters trying to take advantage of the poor and desperate who hoped to grab a small piece of magic for themselves. The real stuff was on lockdown, and access limited to highly vetted workers. The military had seized control of the site, a move that the Assembly of Free States assured the good people of Titanshade was only a temporary step.
The notetaker called out, “Fingernails have some material under them. You want to double-check before we wrap her hands?” The tech popped open a pair of paper bags to be slipped over Jane’s hands and secured with rubber bands.
“Hold on,” I said. There was a glimmer of glass on the cobblestones. I borrowed a pair of tweezers from the techs and stooped to snag another glass shard. “Might as well be thorough.” Jax held an evidence bag open as I navigated the fingernail-sized chunk of glass toward it. I fumbled the tweezers at the last moment, and the shard fell free. My left hand shot forward and the shard plopped into my palm. I expected to feel a slight prick at the most, but instead there was an uncomfortable, intense cold combined with a tingle that buzzed across my hand, as if I’d pressed my palm against a sheet of ice covering a fast-flowing river.
I snatched my hand away, letting the shard drop to the ground. Jax rolled his eyes, but picked it up without complaint. He probably thought I’d bungled the catch the way I’d fumbled my notepad earlier. I blinked, averting my eyes as Jax handed the bag to the notetaker.
I’d never encountered anything like that, not even when I stood in the spray of the manna strike. Manna on flesh simply felt like a pinch followed by numbness. But this also wasn’t phantom pain. A cloud settled in the back of my head. If it was imagined, that meant another trip in front of the department shrinks, and maybe more time behind a desk. Best to shove it inside, back with the guilt for feeling at home as I stood beside a corpse in an alley. The best I could do was to promise myself that I’d be thorough in finding the killer.
The tech noted on the tag that I’d touched the shard directly and put the bag with the others. If it was narcotics, that would at least tell us something. Something besides the fact that a woman was dead.
I looked at the alley opening and the city that lay beyond. Buildings and sidewalks crowded with occupants either waking up or stumbling home. Families and friends, young lovers trying to make time, hustlers trying to make a quick buck. All of them trying to scrape and scheme enough to make it to another day. Walking among them were more killers than a sane mind could comprehend. It was our job to reduce that number by one.
2
WE LEFT THE TECHS TO bag and tag the rest of the items, giving them instructions to have us paged if they found anything unusual while we worked the neighborhood. At the mouth of the alley scarlet crime scene tape stretched from one building to another like an exposed tendon. We pressed it aside as we reached the street. The phrase “red tape” supposedly comes from that material, a comment about the many levels of bureaucracy involved in police procedure. I wasn’t sure if it was true, but it sure as Hells echoed my experience.
On the far side of the barrier, two patrol cops assigned to scene control leaned against their cruiser, thumbs hitched in their belts, eyes on the pedestrians streaming past in the morning darkness. One of them, a shorthaired blonde named Bells, squinted at us as we approached.
“Not much to go on, huh?” She was the one who’d spotted Jane’s body, and called it in. We’d debriefed her as soon as we’d arrived.
“Not yet,” said Jax. “We’ll see what we turn up.”
“Too bad,” said Bells, with all the concern I might show a loose thread on a new shirt. “There’ll be another dead candy in an alley tomorrow. Better luck with that one.”
I kept walking. “Keep your eyes open,” I told her. “And be careful out there. Hate to see you sprain a finger the next time you phone it in.”
Bells responded with a malicious chuckle and an obscene gesture that proved her fingers were plenty limber.
I seethed, and felt Ajax side-eyeing me as we walked. When we had a bit of distance, he told me I should let it go.
“A woman’s dead.” I shot the alley a look over my shoulder. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Of course it does,” he said, his sigh accompanied by the tinkling of countless small teeth lining his eating mouth. “It just doesn’t count for everything.”
He was right. It takes a certain amount of compartmentalization to stay sane dealing with tragedy every day, and some of us have to make a show of it in order to get to bed at night. It was something most cops struggle with. I know I did. Maybe I could have talked to Jax about that. Instead I changed the subject. It’s something I’m good at.
“I’m freezing.” I pulled my overcoat tighter to ward off the chill. “I could use a hot drink.” I craned my neck, taking in the neighboring buildings. Sturdy-built things of brick and steel, crowned with dilapidated storage sheds and water towers ready to be topped off by ice trucks. Each one was full of potential witnesses. “You want to grab coffee before we knock on doors?”
“Sure,” he said. “Give them time to wake up.”
I headed toward our car. Early morning fog twined among the alleys and parking meters, and the winter sun still hid far below the horizon. This season held only brief hours of daylight. In two weeks we’d hit Titan’s Day, the moment when the days would start getting longer and the brightness of the sun stronger. But to get there we’d have to live through the longest night of the year. I merged with the crowd, finding some comfort in the anonymous bustle of the city street, only glancing backward when I realized I’d left Ajax behind.
I found my partner paused by a newspaper stand, digging in his pocket for loose change.
“Let’s go, Jax!” I yelled. “Your partner needs coffee.”
He ignored me and fed a few arcs into the coin slot of each vending machine. He caught up with me a moment later, several papers tucked under his arm.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s have our drink and meet the neighbors.”
* * *
We grabbed a couple steaming cups of caffeine from a street vendor and settled into our car, an unmarked unit from Hasam Motors. The Dash models were the choice of the TPD because of the balance they provided: small enough to maneuver the tight streets of Titanshade, cheap enough to be easy on the city’s budget.
Ignoring the useless fold-out waxed paper handles, I gripped my coffee cup between my palms, enjoying the warmth against the stubs of my missing fingers. Unlike most cups in Titanshade, the coffee lids weren’t tapered, making it more diffic
ult for Ajax to use. He popped the lid and pinched the lip into a spout. With a handkerchief tucked into his collar to allow for any drips, he poured the drink into the smaller, more discreet mouth in his throat used for eating and speaking.
It was a nice moment of peace and quiet. Until Ajax ruined it.
He spread out the newspapers and flipped through them like a kid looking for the funny pages. I asked what he was doing.
“Catching up on the news.” The newsprint rattled as he turned the pages.
I returned to my coffee. Jax and I had come a long way. Jax had barely made detective when we were paired up, a college-educated newcomer, whose primary task had been to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid on a high-profile case. But he’d proven himself to be a good cop and a better partner than I deserved. Now I trusted him as much as anyone in a city full of predators and thieves. Still, he was a small-town kid struggling with the learning curve that came from patrolling one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. If the papers helped get him there, I was all in favor.
I should have known it was a lie.
Ajax tossed me one of the local rags, The Titanshade Union Record. “Looks like the hero of the hour is at it again.”
Mollenkampis’ dual mouths allow them to fill their speech with undertones and trills, enriching each word with subtle nuance. Absolutely none of which was present in Jax’s tinkling chuckle, and I could guess why he’d really gotten the papers.
I flattened the Union Record across the steering wheel. There was a photo of me stalking out of the Bunker in shirtsleeves, holding what appeared to be a large evidence bag. The headline proclaimed HERO COP TAKES OUT THE TRASH. The article conveniently failed to point out that it was no metaphor; I was on desk duty at the time, and the photo was of me literally taking out the trash after our lunch had started to smell.
For most of my career, keeping my job had hinged on never attracting press attention. But since the manna strike, I couldn’t walk out of my apartment building without getting a write-up. The city’s economic landscape had turned upside down with a single well strike, and I’d become the face of that change. It had taken six weeks before things calmed down enough for the two of us to return to active duty.
I scanned the article.
“At least this time they got the details right,” I muttered.
Mandible twitching, Ajax snatched the paper away. “Detective Carter continues to right the wrongs of a city at war with itself,” he read.
I shrugged, doing my best to seem embarrassed.
“Strong jaw?” he said. “Stubble-laced cheeks?”
“Sounds right.” I scratched the day’s growth of whiskers decorating my chin.
“Uh-huh.” Jax scanned further. “The look of a leader. Who wrote this garbage?”
“Garbage seems a bit judgmental . . .”
He found the byline. “Taran Glouchester.” He blinked. “Isn’t that—”
“The asshole who did the smear piece on us during the Haberdine case.” At the time it’d caused a major headache.
“After you ran into him with the Hasam.”
“Bumped him,” I corrected.
Jax hummed a low note. “Well, if it says something about a full head of hair, then we’ll know he’s blind as well as incompetent.”
I snorted and unfolded one of the other papers. While The Union Record may have latched on to those of us at the manna strike as popular heroes, other outlets had different agendas. The Daily Saber’s front page featured a photo of Ambassador Paulus, our representative from the Assembly of Free States, making some kind of proclamation about the military presence. She managed to look dignified, even though the photo showed a sea of protesters waving signs declaring “Open the Wells” and “Titanshade for Titanshaders.” Sharing the dais with Paulus was Colonel Marbury, the head of the AFS military encampment. Behind them, slightly out of focus, was Paulus’s deputy, Gellica. The grainy black and white didn’t do Gellica justice, or give enough weight to the impossible secrets behind her smile, but still, I found my eyes lingering.
Ajax drained the last of his coffee and crumpled the waxed paper cup into a ball.
“Are we doing this or not?”
I rubbed at my ear, which seemed to have developed a mild ring. One more health issue to worry about. I chucked the newspapers into the back of the Hasam and we got to work.
* * *
We canvassed the buildings on either side of the alley, as well as the two across the street. All were apartment buildings about five stories tall and packed full of people who didn’t seem particularly concerned that someone had been killed within earshot. We knocked on every door, introducing ourselves and asking if the locals had seen or heard anything in the night. Not surprisingly, nobody had anything useful to share, but they all had an opinion on what had happened. There’s this idea that when cops ask questions the neighbors clam up. It happens sometimes, but more often they’re eager to talk, even if it’s only to try and pry details out of us. Murder makes for juicy gossip.
The residents were mostly human and Mollenkampi, with a few Gillmyn thrown in the mix as well. The bulk of the city’s population was made up of these three Families, as the remaining five either rarely came this far north or had physical properties that made it more difficult to cohabitate with their sibling species.
The interviews were slow going. The tingles I’d felt in the alley preyed on my mind, and the chill in the air made every moment uncomfortable. Ajax, on the other hand, seemed perfectly relaxed. Which was good, since there were more people at home than I expected—one more side effect of the manna strike. Some oil rigs had ceased operations by AFS order, others had halted production in order to search for manna wells on their property, hoping for a magical strike of their own. Either way, the result was rig workers sitting on their hands at home, while their bank accounts dwindled and their bored uncertainty turned to anger.
After a few hours, we came to a top-floor apartment where the door had so many layers of flaking paint that it almost looked cheerfully purposeful. Jax knocked while I tugged my earlobe, trying to release the pressure. I still heard a ringing echo, as if I’d clamped my hands over my ears. He knocked again, louder, but got no response, despite the sound of a television emerging from inside.
Finally giving it up for a lost cause, we started down the hall only to be greeted at the top of the stairs by a wild-eyed human lurching a sloppy zigzag toward us. She stopped a few steps away, pulling up short as if shocked to see two men who’d been standing in plain sight. Stepping back, she teetered on one heel, wobbling on the brink of a multi-floor tumble.
Jax shot forward and grabbed her arm. He pulled her away from the stairs and she staggered into me, head falling against my chest. She had an expensive haircut allowed to fall into disarray, light brown curls growing wild. Her breathing was heavy, but carried no smell of alcohol. Her perfume was dainty. Rose petals and honey.
As I helped her balance she gripped my arm tight—very tight. I registered her strength with surprise, even as the tingle I’d encountered in the alley returned, now racing from elbow to fingertip. I tried not to think what it meant if the severed nerves were more damaged than the doctors thought.
“Where you headed?” She had long strands of hair or thread over her jacket. I could feel them but they were too fine to see. I pulled them away, trying to get my hand free. This wasn’t how I wanted to spend my morning—the hallway seemed dimmer and the chill in the air more intense than it had when we arrived.
“Up,” she said, her tongue working at the corner of her mouth like she’d just discovered her lips. “I wanna see, you know . . .” A slight hiccup. “Starshine.”
“Sure you do.” No one in Titanshade saw stars unless they got to the ice plains, well outside the light pollution of the city. Jax fished the woman’s wallet out of her back pocket.
�
��This says you live here,” said Jax. “6F.” The door we’d just been knocking on. “Is that right,” he checked her ID again, “Sherri?”
The woman protested. “I live everywhere,” she slurred. “And the mind’s eye sees all things.”
“Alright,” I said. “Focus your mind’s eye on me.” I snapped my fingers to catch her attention. “Here’s the deal. We’re gonna walk you to your apartment, and if you can get inside and close the door on your own, we’re not gonna drag your drunk ass down to a holding cell. You understand me?”
Sherri nodded, turning the motion into a whole-body expression. Jax released her, and she stumbled up the rest of the way, a muttered “whoosh!” accompanying each step, as if she were hearing an internal soundtrack of roaring winds. She fumbled her keys at the door, but she didn’t even have her hand on the latch before it was pulled open from the inside.
Standing in the doorway was a kid no older than fourteen. He wore jeans and a ratty zip-up hooded sweatshirt over a faded T-shirt, and his eyes sparked, first with anger, directed at the woman, then changing to fear as he noticed us.
The woman skated her fingernails over the face of the door. “Ronnie!” she cooed, reaching out to cradle his cheeks. “Hey, honey!”
The kid craned his neck, avoiding her touch even as he slid between her and us. A protective gesture.
Jax flashed his badge, and that calmed the kid a little, but he still wasn’t happy to find a pair of cops at the door.
“Were the two of you home earlier this evening, Ronnie?” I asked.
The kid’s eyes narrowed. “Name’s Ronald.” He had the same tangle of curls and sharp nose as the woman. I guessed mother and son.
Sherri rubbed her chin and said, “I gotta get to bed. Got work in morning. Have fun talking to your friends, honey . . . .” She leaned in and attempted to kiss his cheek, a wet smack that seemed to contain more drool than affection. Then she shambled down the hall, one hand outstretched, fingers grazing either side of the hallway. Halfway down, she toppled a pair of framed photos from the wall and busied herself collecting them.
