Liquid Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 9)

by Alex P. Berg

  “Come on. He’s not here. Not anymore. Either that or he’s hiding. Either way, he’s not coming out, no matter how nice you ask.” I shooed her. “Go on. Give me some room.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can kick this door down and we can keep searching for clues.”

  “What?” said Mines. “You can’t do that. We don’t have a warrant.”

  “A warrant? Please. We don’t need one when we’re in hot pursuit of a dangerous felon. Besides, don’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That woman screaming, coming from within the house. Sounds like Carmine’s cousin, Rialta. She could be in danger.”

  Mines gave Steele a look. “Is this how the two of you normally operate?”

  “Not as often as we used to,” she said. “But to be fair, he’s right about the hot pursuit statute.”

  “Fine.” Mines stepped to the side. “But stick together. If he’s armed with a knife, he’ll be more dangerous in close quarters than out here.”

  I did what I do best. My boot slammed into the padlock, sending the door flying inward. We surged through after it, tackling the rooms one by one. Shay found another lantern near the hearth in the living room, which we promptly lit before continuing our search, but the room itself was clear. So was the kitchen.

  We moved down a hallway and into the first room on the right. A bedroom. The dresser on the side had its drawers thrown open, with a number of clothes strewn across the floor and bed.

  “Think he’s just messy?” I said.

  “Either that or he was trying to make a hasty exit,” said Steele.

  We kept moving, pausing at the next open door. A washroom.

  “Hold on,” said Steele.

  She walked inside, her lantern filling the room with light. A white porcelain washbasin stood in the center, filled with water of a decidedly reddish hue. A towel with blood on it hung over the edge of the tub, and shredded pieces of cloth littered the floor.

  “Looks like someone was making bandages,” I said.

  Shay didn’t respond. She walked to the other side of the washbasin and knelt. “What the hell…?”

  I couldn’t see around the edge of the basin, and the washroom wasn’t big enough for me to easily scoot around my partner. “What is it?”

  Shay stood, holding a wastebasket between her hands. There were more scraps of bloodied cloth at the bottom, but something else stuck out. Literally.

  “What the heck is that?” said Mines over my shoulder.

  “It’s…the murder weapon,” said Shay. “It’s some sort of horn.”

  Some sort was right. About a foot and a half long, straight, coming to sharp point at the tip and widening to an inch and a half in diameter at the base. A tight spiral wove along its entire length, and though there was blood both at the tip where it would’ve punctured Carmine and at the base where Joey would’ve held it, it was the unbloodied portions that caught my eye. They sparkled, almost as if they were embedded with flecks of quartz.

  “You know what that is, don’t you?” I said.

  “I’d guess some kind of antelope. Maybe a narwhal.”

  “Stop kidding yourself,” I said. “Look at it. It glitters. That’s a unicorn horn, Shay.”

  My partner gave me one of her familiar looks of disbelief. “Come on, Jake. A unicorn? I’m sure it’s just covered in sparkly paint, or if not, perhaps it’s petrified. It could’ve been infused with minerals that give it this appearance.”

  “Not with that shape, that taper, that spiral. I’ve seen one in a museum, Shay. That’s the only thing it could be. I swear to the gods.”

  Mines had lost her voice, but she finally managed to locate it. “Wait…what? Are you suggesting Joey Nicchi stabbed Carmine Abano with a unicorn horn? That’s insane.”

  “Any more insane than Johnny Nicchi getting stabbed with a trident?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Mines, nodding. “A lot more insane, actually.”

  I hadn’t really thought that through. “Okay. Fine. Point taken. But I’ve learned not to ask questions when evidence is staring you in the face, and this particular piece is making itself self-evident, no pun intended.”

  “Daggers, I don’t understand what’s going on,” said Shay. “Every time I think I have a handle on this investigation, every time I think it’s an open and shut case about debts or affairs or revenge, something like this crops up. I’m good at piecing clues together when they’re sensible, but when fate throws this crap at us, that’s where you come in. Help me out.”

  “I…” I sucked on my lips and sighed. “I have no idea. Not the slightest. Maybe Joey had one in his possession, but why take it with him to murder Carmine? I mean, he took knives and a bow with him, didn’t he? Unless he took those with him after he returned from his assault, but why would he take this with him in the first place? Even if I’m right that Johnny died from a mermaid attack, that doesn’t tie Johnny, our victim, together with Joey, a perpetrator, using another odd weapon. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Mines sighed and wiped her hand across her forehead. “Well, whatever the reasoning behind it, it doesn’t matter now, does it? If what you told me on the walk over is right, Joey had probable cause for attacking Carmine, and now we’ve found a weapon and blood. Furthermore, Joey doesn’t appear to be here. Even if he is, we’re not going to find him now with night having set in. Not with his survival skills.”

  “So what do you want to do?” asked Steele.

  Mines shrugged. “Let’s get the weapon back to the station. I need to spread the word about Joey being armed and dangerous, and in the morning I’ll scrape together every officer I have and make a public appeal. We’ll start the manhunt. Right now, I’m not sure there’s anything else we can do.”

  I opened my mouth to object, but my brain intervened. Despite her inexperience, Mines was right. Everything pointed to Joey, and though Mines seemed concerned about his threat to the general public, he’d only attacked Carmine, who he must’ve suspected had been having an affair with Bianca. We still didn’t know what role, if any, Carmine played in Johnny’s death, but Carmine wasn’t about to be a threat to anyone else in his condition.

  I nodded. “Alright. We’ll get started first thing tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll escort you downtown.”

  32

  After accompanying Mines to the police station, we continued to our hotel, ascended the stairs to the third floor, and approached our doors. As I reached into my pocket for my key, I suffered an overwhelming wave of déjà vu.

  I looked up. Shay stood outside her door, once again waiting on me, an expectant look on her face.

  “Well,” she said. “Mines said she’d want to get the manhunt started bright and early. I’d love to be able to wait until Quinto arrives with our overnight bags before we leave, but who knows how long that might take.”

  I nodded.

  “You want me to wake you up? Maybe around seven? That should give us time to eat and still get to the station in time to be involved in whatever efforts Mines enacts.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Seven should be fine.”

  “You sure? That’s early for you.”

  “It’s early now. I’ll have plenty of time to sleep.”

  Shay nodded. A moment stretched into infinity. “Well. Okay. Good night then.”

  Shay stuck her key into her lock.

  I fingered the key in my own pocket. What was it folks said about the definition of insanity? Doing the exact same thing and expecting different results? Well, I’d been here before, in this exact same situation, mere hours ago in fact.

  I might be an idiot, but I wasn’t insane.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Shay paused, her hand still on the key. “What is it?”

  I let go of my key, pulled my hand from my pocket, and approached her. I looked into her brilliant azure eyes, and she gazed back into mine.

  “Shay, I’m not perfect.”

  “I never s
aid you were.”

  “I know that. But let me get through this, and I promise I’ll listen to anything you have to say when I’m done. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You know about me, about my past. I’ve never hid what I went through. Losing my mother to those muggers, never finding out who they were, or what their motivations might’ve been. It changed me. Drove me into detective work. Fostered an unrelenting search for justice in me that hasn’t faded to this day and probably never will. But that wasn’t the only way losing my mother changed me. It turned me inward, and it did the same to the rest of my family, my father in particular. At the time I didn’t understand the degree to which it affected him, but I do now. I’ve loved. I’ve lost. I get it. And it changed my brother, made him less willing to embrace compassion and to attach himself emotionally to the rest of us. And of course, it changed me.

  “You know I’ve never been the best at expressing my emotions. I’m just not that kind of guy. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I cried. Probably toward the end of my relationship with Nicole, when I realized it was over and there was no going back. Over the years I became quite adept at hiding my emotions even when I had them, usually with comedy, sarcasm, or a tailored tough guy exterior. I became a master of emotional suppression. But it’s not simply that I suffer from an inability to express my emotions. It’s that I’ve lost the ability to connect with them, period. If I can’t understand them, can’t face them, listen to them? If I can’t take them all in, nod my head, and process them, then they become a problem.

  “And that’s what happened when I spent time with your family the other night. I sensed they thought I wasn’t good enough for you, but that wasn’t the root problem when I thought about it. It was merely a trigger. The problem was the love your family has for one another in general, and trust me, I know how crazy that sounds. But over the years, I trained myself to steer away from that love. I didn’t have it anymore, and I taught myself I didn’t need it. It was a survival skill. That’s why when I did have a family of my own, with Nicole and with Tommy, I pushed them away, too. So they wouldn’t hurt me. And of course I got hurt anyway, but not as much as I could’ve been if I’d let them in further. That’s why I still struggle with my relationship with Tommy…and with you. Because even though I want you, even though I care for you, hell, even though I need you, there’s a part of my brain telling me I could get hurt, badly, if I go on and that nothing could be worth that.

  “So I’m sorry. Sorry for the way I acted in the presence of your parents and brothers, sorry for the way I’ve treated you over the past couple days, sorry for the way I’ve kept myself bottled up. I need to let it out. I know that now. But I have to be honest with you. I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong with me. I don’t even know if I can be fixed.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Shay waited, making sure I was done before speaking.

  “So…you’re saying you might be damaged goods?”

  “I know I am.”

  Shay smiled. “You know I have two older brothers, right? I played with engineering sets all the time growing up, and they’d always come by and break them. I like putting stuff back together.”

  “Come on. Be serious.”

  The smile disappeared. “I am, Jake. Look, I’m not trying to minimize what you’ve gone through. I understand how difficult it is for you to share that with me, and I appreciate it wholeheartedly. But you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, either. You’ve recognized the problem. That’s huge. Knowledge is half the battle. You know what problem you need to solve. Now you just need to do it.”

  “But how?”

  “By talking to people. By continuing to explore your emotions. By not forcing them down when they bubble up, and by engaging them in a constructive manner instead of letting them collect into an uncontrollable geyser that knocks you and everyone else over with its force. And I’m not saying you should do it alone. I’ll be here for you, but you might need more help than I can give. You might want to consider seeing a counselor.”

  I mulled it over. “Alright.”

  “Really?” Shay lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you might reject that out of hand.”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to keep sabotaging my life. If there’s a way out, I’ll take it. I’m ready for change. The good kind.”

  Shay smiled again, then she reached her hand into the hair at the back of my head, pulled me in, and kissed me. Her lips were warm and soft, her lavender perfume faint after not having been applied the night before. I could’ve stayed in her embrace forever, if she’d let me.

  When she pulled back, she looked me in the eyes. “I love you, you know that?”

  She said it so matter of factly. So easily. Without question or hesitation.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  Shay unlocked her hotel room door, pushed it open, and stepped inside. She turned and looked at me. “You coming?”

  “I would, but the captain’s paying for two rooms. Seems like a waste not to use both.”

  Shay snorted, a smile curling her lips. “And you think I’d tell the Captain?”

  I entered after her, closing the door behind me. “You’re so fiscally irresponsible. What a minx.”

  Shay’s smile didn’t waver. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

  “I do. Want to make out again?”

  Lucky for me, she did.

  33

  I cracked my eyelids and blinked in the darkness, tendrils of a dream floating away like flower petals on a gust of wind. My mind had been churning through an imagined story, something about a decades long battle between merfolk and unicorns, the rulers of the sea pitted against the kingdom of the forest. There’d been action and adventure, battles with speared unicorns and gored mermen, gratuitous flying as there always was in dreams, and even more gratuitous appearances of half-naked elven lovelies.

  Of course, I didn’t need the latter. I had one of those next to me already. I craned my neck, making out Shay’s outline in the bed against the calm darkness of night. On the far side of the room, our window was cracked open, allowing the cool night breeze in alongside the occasional warble of a nightingale. Beyond that in the sky above, stars twinkled, though faintly against a backdrop more dark purple than black.

  I blinked again and yawned, confronting a singular question that assaulted me with its pertinence. What in the world was I doing up so early?

  Based on the color of the morning sky, I’d wager it was about six in the morning, but I was the last person in the world to make an educated guess on the matter, mostly because I could count on two hands the number of times I’d woken before dawn. Even when I had, I’d rarely glanced at a speck of nature before swilling at least two cups of coffee, at which point my sensory perception and color balance were already wrecked from caffeine.

  Shay breathed quietly beside me, so I lifted the blanket off my side of the bed, rolled, and escaped without waking her. I crossed the room slowly so as to not stub my toe on a lurking sofa chair and made my way to the wash closet. There I took some of the cool water in the basin and splashed it on my face.

  Somehow I managed not to gasp. It was colder than I’d expected.

  I looked into the mirror, barely able to make out my own features in the darkness. Whether by the water I’d doused myself with or some trick of the light, I noticed a reflected sheen over me, like that of a merman’s scales.

  I shook my head and reached for a towel. Apparently, fragments of my dream still haunted me. Mermaids versus unicorns… It was a fairy tale befitting a twelve year old boy, or girl more like. A total implausibility, at least in this day and age of cities and modern armies and progress, and yet something of the sort might’ve happened in the past before the combined might of humans, elves, dwarves, and others forced them into hiding.

  Still…maybe they weren’t as extinct as I and everyone else of modern sensibilities thought. Sure, the mermaids might be a stretch. Although that
crazy old coot Connors had insisted he’d heard merfolk in the waters off Aragosto on misty nights, we had zero tangible evidence that they’d been seen in decades. We didn’t even know for a fact that Johnny Nicchi had been stabbed with a trident, so to tie his murder to a mermaid was speculation even I had a hard time convincing myself of.

  But the unicorn? Again, we hadn’t seen a live one. Maybe the horn had belonged to a specimen long dead, maybe a corpse someone had happened across in the forest and pilfered. But there was no question in my mind that the bloodied horn we’d found in Joey’s ranch home was, in fact, from that most magical of equine species.

  The burning question, though, was how the horn had come into Joey’s possession? He was a hunter, so maybe he’d found and slain one of the mythical beasts himself, but why in the world would he use a horn to attack Carmine Abano? Wouldn’t he stick to a knife or bow, one of the weapons he was used to? And what role did the horn play in Johnny’s death, because there was no doubt his demise and Joey’s attack were related. Basically, what role would a unicorn play in a murder and subsequent retaliation?

  Or, put differently, why would someone murder over a unicorn?

  I paused as I wiped my face with the towel, blinking into the mirror.

  I threw the towel back over its rack, returned to the bed, and sat down gently, trying not to make a ruckus. I reached out and gently shook Shay by the shoulder.

  “Shay? Shay?”

  She muttered and rolled over. I tried again.

  “Shay? You awake?”

  Her eyes fluttered, and she looked about without recognition for a second. Then her eyes flicked toward the window and back at me.

  “Jake?” She yawned. “What’s the matter? What time is it?”

  “I don’t really know. I’d guess about six.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Unless winter came a lot fast than expected, it would have to be.”

  She reached a hand up from under the blanket and rubbed her eyes. “What are you doing up?”