Catching a Man

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  Of course, I’m not likely to see anyone I know in the Imperial District. With a sharp thrill in her chest, she stepped out of her shoes and breathed a sigh of relief as she felt the cold pavement through her stockings. She picked up her shoes and headed for the gate.

  Chapter 6

  Kadin skidded into the office about two minutes before her scheduled start time of 9:00 a.m. Her plans to entice Dahran with her shapely legs had hit a snag when Octavira flat-out refused to allow Kadin to borrow the pumps again. She couldn’t tell whether Octavira was most upset about the mud and scuff marks on the outside, the blood stains on the inside, or the fact that her shoes had visited a more prestigious part of the city than she had. Kadin knew she should be disappointed, but her most comfortable soft-soled cognac kitten heels wore into her blisters as it was. She couldn’t imagine what another day in Octavira’s shoes would feel like.

  These shoes are better for solving murders in, anyway, she thought as she stepped off the lift onto the fourth floor. And that is what I’m getting paid to do.

  The wooden beads on Kadin’s handbag clinked as she set it on the grey metal desk of her new office. It served as an antechamber to Fellows’s office, so she could act as the detective’s secretary. The door to his office was closed, so she assumed he wasn’t in, though she didn’t peek through the little window to verify. The filing cabinet and short bookcase matched the desk, and altogether the room gave off an empty, depressing feel. Listening to the steady tick of the clock, Kadin wondered if she shouldn’t bring something in to spruce up the place.

  She pulled a crumpled pile of papers—primarily documentation personnel had given her regarding her new job— out of her bag.

  “Ah, Miss Stone.”

  Kadin jumped and dropped her papers. She spun around and discovered that none other than Dahran White had stuck his head into her office.

  Great, if I had to look like a spaz in front of one person.

  “I’m so sorry.” She tried to find a dignified way to pick the papers up off the floor. Mental note: tight skirts bad for curtseying and bending over in front of attractive men. “You startled me.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Dahran smiled at her, and Kadin resolved to think his expression friendly, rather than smarmy. “I thought you must have heard me approaching.” He knelt and gathered some papers, giving them a cursory glance. “Are you interested in autocar racing?”

  What? Why would he think I…?

  Dahran held up a glossy with a man in bright red on the cover, and she recognized the issue of Racers that Olivan had given her. Her breath caught. Maybe this mishap wasn’t as inopportune as it seemed. She couldn’t have come up with a less obtrusive way to let him know about her “interest.”

  “Oh, yes.” She scooped up the rest of the papers and straightened, smoothing her skirt with the backs of her hands.

  He flipped through the glossy. “Who do you support in the drag on Saturday?”

  “Oh, the Yellow Comet.” she said, naming the first autocar driver that came into her head. Her breath caught in her throat when she realized she had named the fashion laughingstock of the racing community. Olivan and Trinithy only mentioned him to mock his outrageous yellow hair, which seemed to grow out of his head at the exact same shade as his garish autocar.

  Dahran laughed, which could have meant anything, since Kadin had no idea if her new favorite’s racing skills were on par with his style. “Well, it just so happens that I have an extra ticket for the drag.” He handed her the papers. “I was supposed to be going with a friend of mine, but he had to cancel. Would you like to go with me?”

  Kadin’s heart beat faster. She couldn’t believe he had asked her out already, with so little effort on her part. “That would be great! I was so upset that I was going to have to miss it! I usually watch at my friend Olivan’s house, but he’s busy this weekend.” Kadin worried she might be laying it on a little thick, but Dahran seemed to buy it. Besides, Olivan would back her up.

  “That works out for both of us, then,” said Dahran. “Write down your address for me, and I’ll pick you up at 10.” She tore a sheet out of her notebook and did as he asked. As she handed him the paper, he winked at her in a manner she decided to find endearing. “I look forward to seeing you in your drag colors.”

  Deity curse me! When she had named the Yellow Comet as her favorite racer, she had forgotten that she would have to wear his colors to the race. She looked terrible in yellow. I’ll have to make it work. I think Octavira has a yellow dress.

  “Did you want something when you came in?”

  “Oh, right.” He snapped his fingers. “I wondered if you were in yet because no one had made the java. The early starters need it by eight. But the last girl forgot all the time too.”

  “Right.” Did anyone tell me I was responsible for the java? More importantly, how will I convince Octavira to let me out of the house that early? “I’ll get on that now.”

  Kadin made her way over to the office’s makeshift kitchen and inspected the java maker. It didn’t look too different from Octavira’s, though that might have been a more reassuring thought if Octavira let her prepare java. But how hard could it be?

  After a few minutes, she had a brown liquid that smelled awful and tasted even worse.

  This would be so much easier if I liked java. She stared down at the steaming liquid. She didn’t think it was supposed to have little bits of grind floating in it, but she had no idea what to do about them. She decided to retreat to her office and be grateful no one could get food poisoning from poorly prepared java. She didn’t think.

  Fellows hadn’t arrived by the time Kadin returned to her desk, so she decided to type up the notes that she had made yesterday. She coughed at the thick layer of dust that flew into her face when she lifted the black pleather cover off the typewriter on her desk. Fellows’s last aide must not have been a big typer.

  She had keyed most of her notes when Fellows breezed into the office, whistling a jaunty tune. He didn’t say anything to Kadin, just hung his trench coat on the hook outside his door and headed into the back. As if he had awaited the detective’s arrival, Inspector Blaike Warring, head of the homicide department, stormed past Kadin’s desk and into Fellows’s office.

  Kadin had time to hear Warring shout, “Why is the queen’s body downstairs in our lab?” before one of the men slammed the door. She heard raised voices through the wall but couldn’t make out what they said.

  The door remained shut for another ten minutes, and Kadin resisted the urge to move closer to listen in. A loud thump sounded, like someone throwing something on a desk, or perhaps a body falling, and Kadin was wondering whether she should check on the investigators when Inspector Warring stuck his head out and pointed at her. “You! Go get Jace Combs.”

  Kadin got about halfway down the hallway before she realized she didn’t know where to find Combs. Fellows told Combs not to leave the lab until he knew what had killed the queen, so I guess I should head down to the basement.

  For three years, Kadin had operated a switchboard down the hall from the suite that housed Valeriel Investigations’ forensic examination center, but she had never visited the lab. Her shoes clicked against the cheap tile of the basement floor, and she turned into a room that looked much as she expected—lots of hard steel cabinets covered with sharp-looking equipment that she could not identify, much less use. The air stank of formaldehyde, and a device that looked like something straight out of a horror film, all knobs and red wires, hummed in the corner.

  Queen Callista’s body lay on a wheeled table in the center of the room, though Kadin barely recognized her with her face shorn of makeup and her naked body covered in a sheet instead of some trend-setting fashion. Kadin felt like she should be disturbed, but she found, once again, that the sight of the body made her want to seek out whoever had taken away t
he queen’s vitality.

  Even if my place in the pursuit of justice is as a not-so-glorified errand girl.

  Combs leaned over a microscope, so intent that he didn’t notice Kadin come in. She cleared her throat, and the doctor blinked bleary, red-rimmed eyes before turning to look at her.

  Fellows did tell Combs not to leave the lab until he had determined cause of death. But surely Fellows didn’t mean literally.

  “Inspector Warring would like to see you up in Detective Fellows’s office.” Kadin found her voice shook a bit as she spoke, and a pit formed in her stomach. She wasn’t sure if she feared the doctor’s temper, or if she was just nervous performing her first official task as a detective’s aide.

  Combs rubbed his eyes, even as he lifted them heavenwards. “Fabulous. Do you know what about, as if I couldn’t guess?”

  The pit grew, as if her stomach acids solidified around it. “Well, they didn’t say anything to me, but I suspect that it regards your choice to bring the queen’s body here rather than release it to the Imperial Morgue.”

  “Right.” He slammed a clipboard on the counter. “After all, it is much less important to find out what killed Queen Callista than it is to make sure we don’t offend any future Imperial clients. Because solving the crime doesn’t impact our reputation as much as how courteous we act.”

  Kadin’s mouth went dry. “Um… You didn’t stay here last night like Fellows ordered, did you? Because I’m fairly certain that he was exaggerating, and you look as if you haven’t slept in weeks.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Combs swiped a folder off the table then called out, “Corkscrew!”

  Kadin wondered for a moment whether the doctor had invented his own swear word, but then a small man with white tufts of hair over his ears came out of a room adjoining the lab.

  “Yes?” the man—Corkscrew, Kadin presumed—said.

  “Where are you on the tox screen?” Combs opened a drawer and rummaged around in it.

  “I’m going as fast as I can, sir.” Corkscrew’s voice quavered, and the paper in his hand shook loudly enough that Kadin could hear the rustle across the room. “I’m not sure about these toxins you’re looking for. If they had killed her, there would be other signs. I’m sure of it.”

  “Yes, well, let me know when you have any better ideas of what could have suffocated a person and left no marks.” Combs pulled a large syringe out of the drawer and thrust it in Corkscrew’s direction.

  The small man jumped. “I should go back and finish the tests.”

  Combs rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “I need you to take the rest of the samples now. I suspect we’re going to lose the body in the next half hour.”

  “Oh, dear.” Corkscrew tsked. “I don’t think that’s the best idea. The samples won’t be fresh by the time we finish the tests I’ve already got going…”

  “I know that, but we don’t have a choice. The powers that be are going to order me to send the body to the morgue, and old samples are better than no samples.” Combs shook the syringe at Corkscrew again.

  This time Corkscrew took it. “Maybe we should…” He turned his head in Kadin’s direction, and when he saw her, he jumped, nearly sticking himself with the needle. “What is she doing here?”

  “That’s Fellows’s new aide, Kadin Stone.” Combs waved a dismissive hand in her direction.

  Surprised the doctor had remembered her name, Kadin forced a smile at Corkscrew.

  The strange man took a few steps backward, his eyes bulging out of his head. “No, she can’t be here. They said she wouldn’t be here.”

  Combs closed his eyes and looked to be counting to ten. “Please tell me you haven’t stopped taking your medication again. You remember what happened the last time. You’re lucky they let you keep your job after that.”

  Corkscrew frowned. “Well, let’s see, I took…” He counted on his fingers. “That one, and then the other one…”

  Combs whacked the folder in his hands against his thigh. “Just don’t forget again. And take those samples. I have to go let Warring bite my head off.”

  Combs strode across the room. From the hallway, he turned to Kadin. “You coming?” he asked.

  Kadin spun on her kitten heel—then cringed at the pressure on her blisters from the day before—and followed the doctor to the lift.

  Combs pushed the button for the fourth floor, and the doors hissed shut.

  Kadin decided remaining silent would feed the pit in her stomach more than awkward conversation would. “So, you’re going to turn the body over to the Imperial Morgue?”

  “It appears that way.”

  “Well, at least you have all the records and tests that you wouldn’t have gotten if you hadn’t had her for this long.” Kadin watched the elevator dial tick to floor 1.

  Combs gave her a sideways glance. “You don’t think I was wrong to bring the body here?”

  “No, of course not. You said that you needed it to find the cause of death, right? Well, we need that to determine who killed her. Seriously, we seemed to offend the king by existing anyway—” Though he probably would have let you do pretty much anything. “—and Detective Fellows said we needed to solve this case quickly. I don’t know what they’re making such a fuss about.”

  “They’re making a fuss because even if studying the body does help us solve this case, it will lead to bad publicity for the company. We’re delaying the queen’s interment and possibly defiling her body by cutting it open. Plus, the press, no doubt aided by the moguls who profit off of quick investigations, has created the myth that competent investigators can determine cause of death from a cursory examination and that only the hacks and con artists need to hem and haw with tests.” He sighed and for a moment seemed unsteady on his feet. “If news of the queen’s temporary sojourn here gets out, there will always be rumors that we doctored the evidence to cover for someone. I talked to Fellows last night and asked that he consider bringing another investigation company in on the case, so we have witnesses, but he doesn’t want to risk sharing the credit with someone else.”

  The pit in Kadin’s stomach jumped to her throat. “Isn’t it more important that we figure out what’s going on? Someone killed the queen. Granted, he’s probably not some serial killer who’s about to strike again at any moment, but this murder affects everyone in Valeriel!”

  Combs’s eyebrows flew upward as he held the lift door open for her. She huffed, not knowing what was so surprising about her statement, until she caught a glimpse of the girl with the tight dress and the traffic-stopping make-up reflected in the silver lift door. A ninny one step up from a sub-D, who cares more about men looking at her than listening to her.

  And that’s good, she thought. I’m not here to solve murders. I’m here to get a husband. Though, as long as the company kept paying her, she had planned to do both.

  She picked up her pace to keep up with Combs’s long strides. “Do you want some java before going in?”

  Combs gave her a wry smile. “The homicide department doesn’t like us lab rats messing with their java. Not after what Corkscrew did last time.”

  Kadin made a dismissive noise. “I made the java. I can offer it to anyone I want.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to say no.”

  She led him into the kitchenette, and he poured himself a cup. He took a sip, and his eyes opened wide for the first time that day as he spit it back into the cup.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Kadin moved toward the refrigerator. “Did you want cream or sugar? I should have offered some…”

  “Um… no.” Combs stared down at his mug. “It’s, um, fine. Just, you know, kind of hot.”

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Oops. Octavira was right about my java-making skills.

  “No, no! It’s
fine, see?” He took another sip and almost managed not to wince as he swallowed it. “Now I should probably go meet with Fellows and Inspector Warring.”

  Kadin’s heart sank as she stared at the java machine. If her java was undrinkable, she didn’t think the detectives would be as nice about it. I’ll have to pretend I forgot for today. And as for tomorrow… She poured the java down the drain. I guess I know what I’ll be doing tonight.

  Fellows emerged from his office with Warring and Combs an hour later. Kadin hadn’t heard their conversation, but judging by Combs’s frown and Warring’s puffed-up chest, she suspected the queen’s body would soon be on its way to the Imperial Morgue.

  Fellows retreated into his office, and after a moment of indecision, Kadin went to the doorway between their offices. She watched him shuffle through some papers for a few minutes before she tapped on the jamb.

  Fellows looked up and narrowed his eyes. “Do you need something?”

  The pit in her stomach that had almost subsided in the previous hour returned with full force. “Um… I was wondering what the plan was. For the investigation.”

  “I’m going to speak with the duke’s sister, Lady Beatrin Oriole, this afternoon.” Fellows dropped the papers into his outbox tray. “I suppose you can come, if you’d like.”

  “Okay.”

  Fellows scribbled a note on a piece of paper.

  Kadin swallowed. “Do you… do you want to review my notes from yesterday? I typed them up.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary.” Fellows, dismissal evident in his tone, kept his attention on whatever he was writing.

  “Oh, okay.” Kadin shifted her weight. I should tell him about seeing Duke Baurus. “I…”

  “Yes, Miss Stone?”