Titan's Day

by Dan Stout

  Ronald eyed my partner’s intimidating biting jaws and began the conversation with an eloquent, “What?”

  The kid had the lean limbs that came with a teenage metabolism and unhealthy living. We ran over the situation again, keeping details as minimal as possible, and asked what kind of activity he’d noticed on the street last night.

  “Nothing.”

  “There wasn’t anyone on the street at all?” In a town with the population of Titanshade, empty streets were a rarity.

  The kid rubbed one arm, hugging it across his chest as he looked down, pouting. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Who did you see?” Fishing around in my overcoat pocket, I pulled out the scarf I kept there for trips to neighborhoods farther away from the Mount. I slipped it around my neck to help ward off the surprisingly chill air.

  The kid hesitated. Behind him, the TV still blared, occasionally interspersed with static as the reception faded in and out. A wire hanger had been shoved into its back, replacing the rabbit ear antenna.

  “Nobody I knew,” he said.

  “Ronnie!” The kid’s mother snapped, her voice loud in my ear. I hadn’t seen her coming down the hall.

  Sherri reached for her son’s ear, clearly intending to perform the kind of ear twist that mothers have been practicing down through the ages. But she muffed it, and Ronald shifted to the side, letting her stumble past him, only catching her at the last moment.

  Gathering her balance, she said, “Imp’s blade, Ronnie. You saw something, you tell them!” Having either given up or forgotten about reaching for his ear, she wandered back down the hall. Ronald shot daggers over his shoulder, the kind of look that only a mother could tolerate.

  “I already said,” Ronald turned his glare back on us, “I didn’t see nothing.”

  Jax grunted and snapped his heavy biting jaws shut with a cringe-inducing crack. Twenty years my junior, Jax didn’t like to see killers walk free any more than I did. We were both running low on patience.

  The kid shifted, and I got a good view of what he wore beneath the sweatshirt. It was a Viral Lode tour shirt that must have been a thrift store find or a family hand-me-down. The thing was older than him. I pointed my pencil at the worn fabric of the screen-printed logo.

  “You actually listen to them, or just wear the merch?”

  His chin jutted out. “I listen.”

  I tipped my head, as if showing respect. “I saw them live.”

  “Bull.”

  “At the Rosa Pavilion, back before it was shut down. They opened for The Daizey Chainz.”

  The kid uncrossed his arms. “Serious? Viral Lode and the Chainz?”

  I couldn’t help a smug smile. I’d snuck past the gate with my friend Hanford when we were kids, too excited to see the bands to care what happened if we were caught.

  My hand rose. “Swear. I was twenty paces from a stack of amps so loud my ears rang for a week.”

  His cool broke, and a goofy grin replaced the sneer. For the first time since he’d come to the door, he looked his age. “Nice!”

  I asked again what he’d seen.

  “Where?” he said. “It’s a big street.”

  “Down there.” I jerked a thumb at the stairwell window and its view of scarlet police tape sagging across an alley mouth. “You notice anyone hanging across the way?”

  He stared for too long, his eyes widening before he backed away and crossed his arms tight over his chest. “No.”

  I peered out the window, to see if something had spooked him. The scene was still intact, Bells and her partner no longer there. The coroner’s wagon had already whisked away Jane’s remains. From this angle there was something else, something I hadn’t seen from the ground. A security camera over the wall-mounted streetlight at the mouth of the alley. Anyone coming in or out of that building would be caught on tape.

  “Kid,” I said. “Don’t bullshit us. Who’d you see?”

  He shot a glance back inside, at his mother. A look of concern, rather than a request for help.

  “This is a confidential conversation,” I said, and it was true—I wasn’t about to put a kid in jeopardy. The question was whether he’d believe me.

  I was silent, and Jax followed my lead. After a beat, the kid said, “There’s a guy used to come round, stuff to sell.”

  “Stuff?” Likely cheap street drugs like angel tears or chono, but I didn’t want to put words in the kid’s mouth.

  Ronald dug a thumbnail into the flaking paint of the doorframe. “Magic.”

  “You mean manna?” The pressure behind my eyes built a little more. “Kid, no one selling drugs on a street corner’s got real manna.”

  “Whatever.” He tapped his chest. “I don’t get involved.” But he couldn’t resist a brief glance down the hall where his mother still struggled to rehang the family photos. He may not get involved, but I’d bet my paycheck Sherri did.

  “This guy,” I said. “He from around here?”

  “Nah. Never seen him before.”

  I blinked at that. The neighborhood was gang territory, and local bosses rarely gave their blessing to outside operators.

  “You sure?”

  “Course I’m sure. He got two different colored eyes. Stood out from the crowd that way.” Ronald bit his lip. “But that guy don’t come around anymore. He got a permanent setup someplace else.”

  “You didn’t actually spot anyone down there last night?”

  Ronald shrugged again. It seemed like his go-to gesture for defiant indifference. “Nah. I was at Full Tilt most of the night.”

  Jax glanced up from his notepad. “What is that? Store? An arcade?”

  The kid’s sneer returned.

  “The best arcade.” He scratched his nose and added, “I made third round in the Moon Diver tournament.”

  Ajax’s eyes crinkled, the equivalent of a smile for a guy whose lower face consisted of skinless jaws and tusks.

  “How long did you stay?” I asked.

  More feigned indifference. “Pretty much all night.”

  “Alright. You think of anything else, you call us, okay?” I motioned to Ajax, and he produced a calling card with his name and contact number on it.

  The kid’s mother was suddenly between us, snatching the card from the kid’s hand, eyes widening.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re cops?”

  I stared at her. Something was off, but I couldn’t identify precisely what.

  Jax nodded. “Yes, ma’am. As we mentioned—”

  “You get away from my boy!”

  Sherri pressed forward and I reached to restrain her. When I grabbed her shoulder something danced across my hand, tickling and tingling. She shoved me, and I slammed into the wall, feeling as if I’d been hit by a delivery truck. I managed to hold on to her jacket and pulled her along with me. She fell into my chest, and I had another whiff of her perfume as invisible strands stuck to my hands, as if her entire body was wrapped in cobwebs. I batted at them, the same way I would if I walked through a spiderweb, and they dissolved like cotton candy in water. She stepped toward Ajax, easily breaking my grip.

  Breathing heavy, the roaring in my ears growing into something like a distant windstorm, I kept waving my cobweb-covered hands while shouting, “Dammit, dammit, dammit! Just calm down!”

  There was sudden release of pressure behind my eyes and I grew warm and lightheaded. Maybe I had been behind a desk too long.

  But even as I pulled back, my words had the desired effect. Sherri paused, face scrunched up in confusion. For a moment, her legs buckled, and she wavered. That hesitation was all the opening my partner needed. He stepped forward and grabbed her, turning her away and dropping her to the floor.

  “What are you doing? Get off her!” Ronald leaned into my partner and punched Ajax in the side. My head was clea
ring and I grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt, twisting his shoulders while he kept screaming. “Get off of her!”

  “She’s strung out on something.” I thought of the rose petals and honey. There was no stink of liquor, but she was clearly out of control. I’d spent three years working Vice, and had dealt with people under the influence of almost anything imaginable. I’d never encountered anything quite like that.

  “What the Hells did you do to her?”

  “Nothing, kid, we—”

  “Bullshit!” He shook the woman’s shoulder. “Mom?”

  She groaned, muttering, “So good. So strong.” She was out of her mind but unharmed, even smiling. But Ronald didn’t see that.

  The kid snaked free, leaving the now empty sweatshirt in my hand as he planted another kick to Ajax’s back. My partner reared around and bellowed, a loud, eerily plaintive rumble accompanied by a spray of hot mucus from the gaping maw of his biting mouth. Before that display of jagged tusks and grinding ridges Ronald fell to his knees, hands raised defensively, voice cracking even as he found the bravado to scream, “I won’t let you take her away!”

  Jax relaxed his biting jaws and looked away, mandibles twitching uncomfortably. It wasn’t fair to put a kid in that position.

  Fair didn’t always ride along with justice.

  With the kid calming down and the mother subdued, we had to decide what to do with her. Before either of us could speak, Ajax’s pager went off, immediately followed by mine.

  Jax nodded toward the interior of the apartment. “Help me get her on the couch.”

  We set the woman down, and Ronald tucked a pillow beneath her head with the same blend of concern and resentment I’d seen a hundred times before, in a hundred different kids’ faces. It wasn’t easy watching a parent struggle with addiction.

  Jax yanked his pager from a pocket. “Code 187,” he said. Homicide.

  I glanced at the green on green of my display. “Same.”

  Ajax slipped past Ronald, asking, “May I use your phone?” The kid nodded absently.

  While Jax dialed I slipped out of my scarf and overcoat. Maybe it was the adrenaline burst, but I was feeling much better. I gave the kid and his mother a little space, moving a few steps closer to my partner.

  He rattled off his badge number to Dispatch, jotted a couple quick notes and gave a startled shake of his head. “Confirm that address, Dispatch.” A pause, and I listened as he recited it back to the dispatcher.

  I walked to the window and pushed aside the broken blinds that hid Ronald and his mother from the world. I stared at the address of the apartments across the street. 5150 Ringsridge Road. The building we’d just left.

  3

  WE LEFT THE KID TO tend to his mother and headed to the new crime scene. We were still a while out from noon’s brief window of winter daylight but the neighborhood already had a different feel, the city having lurched its way into a new day. There were more signs of life, with people shouting at their kids or one another, only sparing the occasional glance at a pair of cops patrolling the shadows.

  “We already covered this building,” Jax said as we walked. “You think someone got killed between then and now?”

  I took in our surroundings. Early Titan’s Day decorations were already appearing in apartment windows, and in one of the first-floor storefronts an elderly Mollenkampi man climbed a stepstool to string up a sign wishing potential shoppers the traditional season’s greeting: Good Day’s Dawning!

  “I don’t hear sirens,” I said, as we hesitated on the curb, waiting for an opportunity to cross the street. “More likely it’s a cold body.” We started across, cutting through slowed traffic. I carried my overcoat in the crook of my arm. I hoped the seesawing body temperature wasn’t a sign I was getting sick. “What do you think that lady was on? She had full-on junkie strength.”

  “Didn’t notice,” he said.

  I watched his face, assuming he was joking. “She planted me in the wall pretty good.”

  “Now that I noticed.”

  I wasn’t about to ask him if he’d seen the cobwebs or hair or whatever it was I’d felt wrapped around her.

  5150 Ringsridge was one of the first buildings we’d worked, knocking on every apartment door without finding anything out of the ordinary. I glanced at the streetlight as we approached the alley where Jane had been found. Like most streetlights in Titanshade, it was mounted to the building exterior, sidewalk space being too precious to surrender to safety concerns. Above the light I could barely make out the rectangular shape of the camera I’d spotted while talking to Ronald. My pace slowed, and I pointed it out to my partner.

  “Strange place for a landlord to set a camera,” I said.

  Jax slowed as well. “Not much point in a deterrent that can’t be seen.”

  “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’d like to know if its feed was recorded.”

  We stood for a moment, silently staring at the place where Jane’s life had ended only hours before. Scarlet crime scene tape drooped at the alley’s mouth, pulled or fallen loose, crime and victim already fading into background noise. Then we moved on. After all, we had one more homicide on our morning schedule.

  * * *

  Dispatch had informed us the body had been found on the top floor, so for the second time that day, we hiked the stairs.

  Like many apartment buildings, the uppermost level of 5150 Ringsridge was occupied by storage and laundry facilities. When we’d door-knocked that morning we hadn’t bothered to walk those areas. Why would we? Our victim had been on the street, four stories below us.

  A pair of patrol cops had cordoned off the laundry room. We greeted them with a nod and a flash of our badges.

  “What’s the story?” I peered past them, not yet willing to cross the threshold.

  The laundry was a simple thing, a relatively clean place lined with washers and dryers that were scratch and dent specials. Locked storage spaces lined the far wall, no doubt rented out to the tenants who lived in the apartments below.

  The shorter, leaner of the two patrol cops rubbed the back of his neck.

  “One of the tenants came up to do his laundry, and found the body. We arrived, and confirmed that it was . . .” he glanced at his partner, but she didn’t offer any assistance. “Definitely deceased.”

  Ajax pulled out his notepad. “Where’s the tenant now?”

  “Down in his apartment. Looked like he might pass out.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tech team’s on its way. Where’s the body?”

  He pointed at an area near the water supply lines. A red stain marked the vinyl tiles, but there was no corpse in sight.

  I turned back to him. “Well?”

  The patrol cop was pale, and when he grinned, it was the kind of sickly thing a man might wear to convince you he wasn’t queasy. It was armor I’d worn more than once.

  “See for yourself,” he said.

  Careful to watch our steps, we walked in. We were about halfway through the room when a voice called out.

  “Sorry, pal. This is a strict no celebrity zone.”

  I turned to find another cop standing in the doorway. He wore dress pants and shirt topped by a burgundy windbreaker, the kind with white vinyl piping around the pocket lines and elastic on the sleeve cuffs. A checkered leather driving cap pressed down on his mass of dark curls, looking like it might slide off at any time. His badge dangled on a chain lanyard, half covered by the fabric of his windbreaker.

  His name was Matt Dungan, and while he’d added some gray in his hair and wrinkles around his eyes, he also had the same gap-toothed smile he’d worn every day in the years we’d spent working Vice.

  I suppressed a grin of my own and addressed Ajax. “That explains the lack of red carpet. Definitely a small-time operation.”

  Jax flexed his biting jaws, confused
but playing along. “And no craft services,” he added. “You’d think the TPD could spring for some catering.”

  Dungan grunted.

  “Glad to see fame hasn’t gone to your head,” he said.

  We shook hands, and his eyes lit up even more as he tried to squeeze my hand into a pulp. He always did push everything too far, and a joke was no exception.

  I made the introductions between my current partner and old colleague. Dungan was a barrel-chested guy, and his bulk stood in sharp contrast to Jax’s lean build. He didn’t give Jax the same squeeze treatment, probably wanting to make a good first impression, or maybe he just didn’t care about pissing on my partner’s territory.

  “Dungan left Vice around the same time I did. He’s OCU, now.”

  Jax grunted, impressed but not letting it show. “You’re the guys in the papers.” A high-profile group that worked separately from most other divisions, the Organized Crime Unit focused on entire organizations rather than individuals.

  “Look who’s talking.” Dungan fished in a pocket of his nylon windbreaker and came out with a hard candy, the kind they gave away at banks and hotels. “I heard you Homicide guys got paired up,” he said to my partner. “Guess you got asked to take one for the team, huh?” He peeled the candy from its wrapper before popping it between his teeth. “Can’t say as I ever approved of arranged marriages.”

  “Just ’cause you can’t get anyone to tolerate your ugly mug,” I told Dungan, “doesn’t mean marriage is a failed institution.”

  Dungan flashed his little-kid grin. “Ask my ex-wives,” he said. “They’ll tell you how failed it is.”

  His smile wavered when his eyes drifted down to my left hand and the manna-cauterized stumps of two fingers. He didn’t meet my eyes immediately after that, looking instead at the far wall and the vending machines filled with single-serving dryer sheets and detergent packs.