by Dan Stout
“I should’ve known you’d pull something like this.”
“Don’t blame me,” he said. “I asked for a simple favor—”
Jax stepped between us, cutting off any further escalations.
“Are we done?” He looked at each of us in turn. “Because if so we’ll head back to the Bunker.” He gave me a slight push, enough to back me off a step.
For his part, Dungan appeared unconcerned. He unwrapped another hard candy. “I’ll set up a little meeting for you and my guy. Tomorrow should work. I understand you don’t have much of a caseload.”
I snorted, not trusting myself to give him an answer. Across the street a camera crew had pulled up. The anchor exited the van, straightening her blazer and scouting the site. I turned my back, hoping we wouldn’t be seen departing.
“Perfect.” Dungan rubbed his hands. “Tomorrow we’ll go meet the terrible twins’ money man.”
4
AJAX AND I WALKED IN silence, heads down, trying to keep a low profile as we made our way back to the Hasam. We slid into the car’s familiar seats and I craned my neck, searching for an opening in traffic.
As I waited, Jax said, “Are we going to talk about your friend’s request?”
“No.” The wall of cars and trucks was unrelenting.
“Not at all? Not even a joke to minimize the weirdness of the situation?”
I hit the gas and the Hasam shot into traffic, greeted by a chorus of honks and shouts. I even earned an obscene gesture from a Therreau farmer whose beetle-driven cart careened to the side to avoid us.
“No,” I said, and forced myself to loosen my clenched jaw.
We drove away from the dual crime scenes, letting the stop-and-start of traffic push the distaste of Dungan’s extortion into the background. When Jax opened his mouth I hit the thick buttons of the radio presets, jabbing several until I found a track layered with enough squealing guitar and driving bass that it removed the possibility of conversation until we’d reached our destination.
The sprawling tower of concrete and steel at 421 Deland Avenue was officially named the Titanshade Police Department Central Building and Garage, but throughout the city it was known by a simpler name: the Bunker.
In conjunction with satellite precincts around the city, the Bunker housed the many divisions of the TPD as they fought a losing battle against the crime and corruption that accumulated like the snowdrifts beyond the city’s perimeter. Tucked away among its mazes of corridors was also an assortment of holding cells, interview rooms, and medical examiner’s facilities, in addition to the primary TPD garages. But those of us who worked the street suspected its real purpose was to give the administration nice views from corner offices.
We made our way to the third floor, which a simple placard declared to be the home of the Homicide Department. There, in the largest room on the floor, my colleagues’ desks were arranged in a large rectangle, forming a loose open space with a blackboard at its head. This was the Bullpen, where detectives worked in ones and twos, doing the everyday tasks that kept the system running and might bring closure to mourning families. The kind of work that didn’t make it onto TV shows.
When I entered there was no pause in the whir of rotary dials or scratch of pens on carbon paper; typewriters continued to clack and cops continued to bitch about their workload. But I knew they were aware of my presence. By both training and nature, cops take the measure of everyone who walks through the door, assessing threat and intentions. If you ever walk into a roomful of cops and don’t get the once-over, then you know they’re better at being subtle than you are at being observant.
Jax and I had a pair of desks that sat back-to-back, forming our own isolated cell in the greater wilderness of the Bullpen. I took my seat and slid the phone across the desk. On the way in we’d collected our messages from the wall-mounted mailboxes, and now I fanned them out on the desktop before me. Several were garbage, others simple return calls. Two had the same name at the bottom. Gellica. I pushed the bulk of the slips to the side, including the ones from her. They were the messages I had no intention of returning, or at least not until I could clear my head.
Then I started dialing.
There’s something fundamentally satisfying about the mechanical click-click of the phone dial turning as you find the exact person you need to talk to. It’s like you’ve entered in a secret code, and all the answers of the world are about to be revealed. A moment later my call went through, and the brusquely clipped voice of the supervising admin in the medical examiner’s office announced herself and demanded to know what I wanted.
“Hey, Susan,” I said, forcing a note of cheerfulness into my voice. “Is Doc Mumphrey in?” While she checked, I spread out one of the newspapers Jax had picked up earlier. She was back a moment later, to tell me he was.
“Great,” I said. “Can you let him know he’s got a Mollenkampi Jane Doe coming in? From an alley off Ringsridge Road.”
While I waited on the answer Gellica’s eyes still stared from the front page of the paper, her face half obscured by Ambassador Paulus’s shoulder, daring me to return her phone call. I flipped to the sports page instead. My favorite carelbarra team had lost again. I crumpled the paper and chucked it in the trash.
Jax sat down across from me and laid out the three-ring binder that would eventually hold all our case information. The administration called these red-and-white folders Case Management Collections. Cops called them murder books.
“Okay,” I told Susan. “Ask him to put a rush on that one and send me a note when he’s done.” I thanked her before hanging up.
Jax stared. “You always have someone else talk to doctors for you?”
“Doc Mumphrey doesn’t do phones.” I slid out of my jacket and draped it across the chair back. “Let’s get through this paperwork so we can do something worthwhile.”
Jax snapped the murder book shut, sending the paperwork on my desk fluttering away. Including the pink message slips that I’d neglected to discard. He stooped to collect the papers, and froze as he recognized the name on a slip.
“Are you kidding me?” He flipped through the messages. “You’re talking with Gellica?”
There was anger in his voice, and it wasn’t unjustified. Gellica’s connection to Ambassador Paulus was undeniable, and the danger swirling around her wasn’t easy to forget.
“It’s not what you think,” I said.
He raised one of the slips to eye level. “I have your coat,” he read. “Call me or I burn it.”
“Clearly I haven’t been calling her back,” I said. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been sneaking away from my apartment, and I’d given her my coat to keep warm. It had been an unexpected meeting, and one that hadn’t played out like I’d have guessed. I sure as Hells wasn’t comfortable discussing it with Jax.
I snatched the messages from him, intending to throw them away. But that would’ve given Ajax too much satisfaction. I made a show of shoving them into my shirt pocket instead.
“After everything that went down with her boss?” He shook his head. “I’m not saying I don’t get the appeal. She’s got a magic smile. But she’s dangerous.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Gellica and I had more in common than I liked to admit. And it wasn’t just her smile that was magic. She was nothing safe, nothing natural. And nothing short of extraordinary.
“I appreciate the concern,” I said. “But don’t worry. Everything’s under control.” I dropped my voice. “Besides, you and I still owe her a favor.”
His jaws snapped shut, expression souring. “Did you forget what her boss did to Talena?”
I froze, and we both knew he’d crossed a line.
Talena Michaels was one of the few people in the world I truly cared about, and Ambassador Paulus set her up to take the fall on a murder charge. Another person used and discarded by the r
ich and powerful simply to make a bad PR situation go away. Titanshade’s political machine was greased with the blood of innocents.
“I didn’t forget,” I said. “Never will.” Gellica might report to Paulus, but she’d also helped clear Talena. “I don’t need you to remind me.”
Hands raised, Jax backed up and let out a gentle whistle. “I need more coffee.”
As he walked away I grabbed the phone and dialed the Bunker’s main switchboard. I asked to be connected to DO Guyer. As a divination officer, Guyer was one of the few people on the force who dealt with manna on a regular basis. I needed to know if the tingle and weird strength of the intoxicated woman was real, and she wouldn’t spare my feelings. It rang through, but with no answer. I hung up with a frown. There was one other person who’d take what I’d encountered that day seriously.
I tugged one of the pink message slips from my pocket and flattened its crumpled edges. Gellica had her share of secrets, and experiences with manna that were far deeper and stranger than mine. I shoved the slip under my report pages as Jax returned with his coffee. He didn’t take a seat like I expected. Instead he gathered up his suit coat and sighed.
“I suppose you want me to check NICI for similar mutilations?”
“Naturally,” I said. “We both know she likes you better.”
The National Index of Criminal Investigations was something I tried to avoid whenever possible. Sitting at a flickering terminal in the data lab, squinting at light green letters on a dark green background? It’d just be a matter of time before I put the whole thing out a window.
“I’ll start the physical paperwork,” I said as Jax headed to the fourth floor.
“That’s fine,” he called over his shoulder. “But you better have it done by the time I get back.”
I waved him off, as if the very idea was insulting.
Homicide had a limited number of typewriters, so I wandered around until I found a spare. It was perched on a wobbly-legged metal cart whose wheels squealed a protest as I rolled it to my desk. Sitting down and feeding a form five pages thick—one original, two copies, and a black carbon sheet between each—I began to type up the field notes.
The one advantage of a month of desk duty was that I’d had time to relearn how to type with eight fingers. Still, it wasn’t long before the boredom of pecking out the keys got to me. I found myself looking around, hoping for something less mind-numbing to engage with. The newspaper I’d discarded stuck out of the top of the trash can. It had landed with its crumpled front displaying the photo of Ambassador Paulus and the woman behind her.
Ajax was right in saying there was no separating Gellica and Paulus. Each city-state in the Assembly of Free States had an ambassador from the central collective appointed to represent the interests of the other member city-states, an unelected albatross hanging around the neck of the local governing bodies. Largely despised, they were frequently deposed in the changing winds of political favor. Paulus, however, was a political institution as unwavering as the Mount itself. She was the perfect blend of calculating and callous, with the cash, political capital, and sorcerous talent to crush most opponents. Paulus was bureaucratic power incarnate, and Gellica was her right arm.
I turned my attention back to my paperwork, then nudged it aside to reveal the pink message slip one more time. I stared at the name and number. It took the memory of a tingle across my hand and the feel of walking through cobwebs before I finally folded the message slip in half and stuck it in my coat pocket.
* * *
By the time Jax returned with a stack of printed pages bearing the NICI seal, I was more than halfway through the paperwork. He seemed less than impressed.
“Couldn’t find any similar mutilations.” He dropped the stack of printouts on our shared desk space, displacing miscellaneous notes and scraps of paper as it landed. “I figured we could sort these missing persons together, but I guess I’ll do it myself. Unless you need me to finish off the reports for you, too?”
“No, but if you wanted to get me a coffee, that’d be great.”
Jax ignored me, taking a seat and beginning to separate the tractor-feed edging from the sides of the missing persons reports. I took the hint and focused on my typing.
We worked in silence for another hour or so before I couldn’t take any more of the spirit-crushing boredom of paperwork. I rattled the cart to get Jax’s attention. He ignored me at first, and it took another two attempts before he finally looked up, irritation clear in his eyes.
“I’ve been thinking about our Jane Doe,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“What do artists want?”
“So now she’s an artist instead of a candy?”
“She might be a candy,” I said. “There’s no doubt she was an artist.” I pulled out the last of the carbon forms from the typewriter. “She could be both. Anyway, what keeps an artist going? What do they want?”
Jax rolled his shoulders. “Money,” he said. “Food. Shelter. Paintbrushes. Probably not in that order.”
“And to get all that, she’d need what?”
“A day job.”
“She just moved to town,” I said. “Assume we’re dealing with a dreamer here.”
Jax drew a handkerchief from his coat and turned toward one of the leeward windows, cleaning his tusks as he looked across the city skyline to the hints of the ice plains beyond.
“She’d need an agent,” he said. “A manager. Maybe a gallery owner?”
“We need an in with the art scene,” I said. “How do we do that?”
Jax spread his hands. “How would I know?”
“You went to college,” I said. “I figured you’d be into dressing in black and wearing berets.”
“Okay.” Jax tucked away his handkerchief. “First, I don’t think artists actually wear berets. Secondly, I studied poli-sci and theology. I wasn’t exactly hanging out in the art world.”
“Your lack of culture never ceases to disappoint,” I said.
“This from a guy who thinks belching out beer jingles is high art.”
I slouched against the curved back of my chair, idly scanning the Bullpen while I let my mind wander. I thought about the strangely strong woman and her son, and how their small family was being torn apart by her battle against addiction. I thought about the morning’s homicides, and Dungan’s strange request. And I wondered why a dead gangster got four times the attention as a young woman killed in an alley.
I must have been staring, because Jax waved a hand in front of my eyes. “You okay?”
I pushed the completed paperwork to the side of the desk.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “You want a snack?”
* * *
We headed to the hallway, where a pair of vending machines squatted on either side of a drinking fountain whose Out of Order sign was so old that the letters had faded almost to illegibility. I dropped in a quarter-tael coin and got a Black Gold bar. Jax opted for a tube of Lemonales, soft chewable candy that he could drop directly into his eating mouth.
“So do we have a plan for tomorrow,” he said, “or are we still not talking about your pal Dungan?”
“Not sure he’s my pal anymore,” I said. “I’d never pull shit like that.”
“You mean like breaking rules because he thinks he’s serving a greater justice? Probably accompanied by an exaggerated sense of his own importance? You and he are nothing alike.”
“I’d never let a case go untouched,” I said.
“No,” he grew serious. “You wouldn’t do that. But you’d threaten it, if you thought it’d motivate somebody.”
I nodded, talking through a mouthful of candy bar. “Maybe I oughta motivate you into a different line of questioning?”
Jax chuckled. “You’ve bent your share of rules since I’ve known you. And I haven’t known you long.”
I glared at him, and the soft flesh around his eyes wrinkled as he held in laughter. “I’ve got a list put together,” he said. “If you ever want a nice, long read.”
“I get it,” I said. He started to respond but I cut him off. “No, I do. Dungan gets shit done and bad guys go away. I get the appeal. But you gotta balance it out with . . .” I bit into my candy bar. “With something.”
The elevator at the far end of the hall slid open with a ding, and the familiar voice of our supervisor cut through the background buzz of the Bullpen.
“Carter! Ajax! My office.”
Captain Bryyh stormed past us without breaking stride, and we were swept up in her wake. The captain had put in her years, making her eligible to take a pension and forget about the violence and deceit that defined the city. But here she was. For someone like her, there was always one more thing undone, one more gear in the machine that needed mending. For most of my career, I’d been one of those broken gears. Since I’d been tagged as the man who brought back manna, I wasn’t sure if she viewed me as irretrievably broken or finally fixed.
We followed Bryyh as she pushed into her office. She wore her hair in long braids, and the beaded ends of each gray-streaked plait gathered into a ponytail that rattled as she turned to face us. She must have updated the blackboard recently, as chalk ghosted the fabric of her dark blue suit and the rich brown of her hands. Permanent frown lines etched the skin between her brows.
“What happened in that alley this morning?” she said by way of greeting.
I glanced at Jax. My partner looked as confused as I was.
Bryyh waited in silence, until I opened my mouth to speak. She immediately interrupted me. It was going to be that kind of conversation.
“Was there part of ‘low profile’ you didn’t understand?” she said.
“There were two bodies,” Jax said, words as precise as if he were on the witness stand. “Unknown if they’re related. A Gillmyn named St. Beisht and a Mollenkampi Jane Doe. OCU took the Gillmyn, we’ve got the Jane Doe. Low profile. We’re on it.”
