The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant

by Tee Morris

  We both jumped out of our skins, but Gertie was the tenser of the two of us. The newspaper in her hands now sported a three-inch tear at its spine.

  Detective Jerry Flannigan stopped in his tracks, wincing at hearing the paper tear. The natural echo of the library made it sound far worse than it really was, not that tearing paper in a library is really a good thing to begin with.

  While Gertie was the responsible party, Jerry went pale as he looked over the damage done. “Oh geez, I’m—uh, did I just—?”

  “No, no, no, no…” As I watched Gertie, I realized how much I really owed her on this one. I not only took up her afternoon and stretched her attention into the early evening, but I got her so wound up into this case that it cost the library a periodical. She took a deep breath, and that stopped the ripped newspaper from trembling in her hands. Gertie closed it as best as it would close, shot me a very quick, very deadly stare and then slapped a smile across her face. “No, not at all, sir. I tend to get too involved with my patrons and their research.”

  Yeah, she’s talking about me.

  “How can I help you, sir?” she asked Jer.

  His pale complexion regained some of its color, and that color was red. “Oh, um, no ma’am. I’m here to see that guy behind you,” he said pleasantly, pointing to me.

  She now looked between us, and then looked at the papers strewn across the library’s tables. “Ah, I see,” she replied curtly. Her eyes came to rest on me. “Then perhaps I should clean this up while you two talk?”

  Uh-huh, she really wasn't happy now. Another rain check for that date at Mick’s. An unhappy librarian. Not good. It’s like poking a basilisk with a stick and then running away. And yes, both basilisks and librarians have incredible memories.

  “Thanks—” I started, but needed to clear my throat. I fought through the pain, and found my voice again. “Thanks for all your help, miss. I will make sure to give a donation to the library before I leave, considering all the time you have given me.”

  Gertie paused in folding up the St. Louis newspapers, and then resumed her duties while she said, “That would be lovely, sir.”

  That was sweat I was feeling on my hairy back.

  “Billi?” Jerry asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Sorry. It’s been a long afternoon…”

  “And evening,” quipped a female voice from the opposite side of the table.

  I didn’t bother to look. Standing in the chair, I was eye-level with my fellow detective. “How did you find me?”

  “Mindy told me you’d be here. I, uh…” Jer’s voice trailed off as he watched Gertie for a second. “Sorry, did I interrupt something?”

  “We were wrapping up,” I said, ignoring the huff from behind me. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, this must be a case of great minds thinking alike. I heard you and the librarian here talking about the Baltimore Mariners heading back home.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been following that team pretty closely this season. Guess you could call me a secret fan.” Sometimes, I hate this job, especially when I have to lie to friends. “I wanted to catch them one more time before they finished up.”

  “No need to rush and get a seat,” Jer said. “We got one of the Mariners.”

  “Really,” I chortled. “Guess they were celebrating a win today as well?”

  “In the morgue.”

  The small gasp from behind caused me to turn this time. Gertie tore her gaze from Jer and locked peepers with me.

  I reached into my coat and from my wallet dropped a few bills on the now-clean tabletop. “Like I said, Gertie. Rain check. I think I’m on the clock.”

  “You ain’t kiddin’, Billi,” Jer said. “Just wait until you see the body.”

  Chapter Eight

  Stiff Competition

  Beating the heat in Chicago isn’t always an easy thing to do. You could go for a dip in Buckingham Fountain. No, perhaps it was not what the artisans expected of it and I’m not sure city officials intended the centerpiece of Grant Park to become a public swimming hole in a pinch, but what were the cops going to do? Arrest you for cooling off? I‘m sure the flatfeet were thinking the same thing I’m thinking: it beats sweating like an Ogre dressed in full battle gear, and smelling like the underbelly of a pack beast. You could take a dip in Lake Michigan, but in the fountain you didn't have an undertow or shipping traffic, and—of course—you can see the bottom without a worry.

  If we were to catch a glimpse of our Great Lake’s bottom, we’d probably be inclined to change its name from “Lake Michigan” to “Mob Graveyard of the Midwest”.

  What the city didn’t realize was that apart from taking a swim in Buckingham or risking your spotless record in the eyes of Lady Justice by stripping down to your underclothes, there was a third option if you needed to cool off: clock in some time at the city morgue. Yeah, nothing like stepping into the depths of Chicago’s criminal crypt where its occupants are kept in cool comfort while those truly blessed by the Fates noodle through the cause of their deaths. Had Gryfennos—hell, had Acryonis—possessed the smarts on maintaining temperature in buildings, maybe clerics could have kept a handle on those plague outbreaks. I wished I could afford a creature comfort like air conditioning for the office or my flop, but that was a luxury reserved for the remaining upper class, and for businesses like printing houses, florists, and city essentials.

  Sadly, with gangland crime the way it was, morgues were considered “city essentials”. Stood to reason, of course. The last thing you wanted on a hot day in Chicago was to have the freezer here conk out. Health reasons aside, corpses were tough enough to stomach, but corpses left to their own time in sweltering heat? I’d continue…but I don’t know if you’re reading this over lunch, dinner, or a midnight snack. I really don’t want to ruin your appetite, or kick up what you’ve already eaten.

  So, while it wasn’t a July or August heat, it was that kind of spring evening that reminded you summer was just around the corner. My coat was draped over my arm as I walked into the crypt with Jerry only a few steps ahead. I had to smile at the moxie of my pal, Detective Flannigan. The reactions were consistent: a nod to Jerry, then eyes dropped down to me—blink—and eyes returned to Jerry for a long stare. The expressions ranged from “You remember what happened the last time you pulled this stunt?” to “You’ve got some nerve bringing it here”. It was sure money that some of those dinks were making a beeline for the “Snitch Line” the moment we passed, to let O’Malley know that I was here. Fucking shield-buffers, to think ratting out Jer would get them points toward something that mattered.

  We weren’t even past the first descending staircase when I had to put my coat back on. The sweat in my shirt was cold now, and I felt wide awake with the sudden chill against my skin.

  “Just through here,” Jer said, his voice sounding oddly out of place.

  Maybe it was his own brush with death, but I picked up a slight waver in his voice. Not that he really wanted to be spending his early evening in the morgue. Apart from necromancers and dabblers in black magic (redefining stupidity with every incantation they mumbled), I don’t know anyone who would enjoy clocking in some time in a place like this. Most of the staff here considered this job as a stepping stone to a loftier position in the criminal investigation hierarchy.

  While we both dealt with death as part of the job, I felt a tightness in my throat and a welling in the pit of my gut as I entered the examination room where the covered body waited for us. If I’d been hungry when I got there (since Gertie and I had, more or less, worked through lunch), seeing the cold meat on the slab stopped my tummy in mid-rumble.

  Hearing the chair legs grind across the floor and echo around us helped me realize what was so unsettling about the morgue. Death, as we dealt with it, appeared random or chaotic in some fashion. The blood splatters, the stiff’s final efforts to remain standing before kissing the pavement, or the concluding act of defiance before taking one bullet too many—it didn’t
matter if the carnage was an organized hit, a crime of passion, or a last stand across a moor separating your nation from some seriously cranky Black Orcs, there would always be signs of disarray and rash decisions made in those final, fleeting heartbeats of life.

  Not in a morgue. Here, death was diagnosed, catalogued, and tagged. Everything around the dearly departed was tidy, kept in meticulous order. The emotion forever caught in the face of the victims—innocent bystanders, soldiers, and marauders alike—was absent. The eyes were closed, the mouth turned down slightly. Neither forlorn nor peaceful, their expression—if you could call it that—conveyed nothing. That was what made death here so different than what we were accustomed to. Death, in this place, was just part of the daily grind, bereft of any thought, feeling, or purpose. The city morgue was truly dead in every sense of the word, and we were in the belly of this architectural beast.

  Good thing there weren’t any windows around to let us know it was night. That would have made this setting all the more uneasy.

  Then Jer spoke. “Okay, Billi.” His voice was probably far louder than intended, and perhaps it startled him a bit. The silence here was just too thick for my liking, and conversation served as another reminder that we were alive. It should have been assuring, yet everything felt wrong. The fact that we were alive in this very ordered, very particular place of death seemed a complete and utter mistake. We didn’t belong here.

  Here we were, nonetheless, taking our time to get to know a guy who was no longer in a hurry getting anywhere.

  Jer asked more quietly, “Ready for the floor show?”

  I shimmied on the chair. No wobble. A pleasant surprise. “So, what does a dead baseball player look like?”

  He pulled back the sheet covering the stiff in front of us. “The ones from Baltimore look like this.”

  My eyes narrowed on what remained of this poor dink’s face. The bridge of his nose was now bent, not to the left or to the right, but inward. His skin was an attractive blending of blues, violets, and blacks against a pale, pasty canvas, rivulets of crimson and brown dried against the surface and filling the deep folds of skin. Due to the face’s concave condition, his lips were parted, locking his mouth into some kind of permanent snarl. His brow also remained furrowed, and I could only guess it was going to stay that way.

  “Is this the best they could make him look?” I asked, wincing at every new grotesque detail I caught under the harsh light.

  Jer’s fingers were still on the sheet covering him. “That’s just the warm up, pal.”

  The sheet continued to slip away, and I squinted at the sheen coming off the stiff. I should have gotten on the phone and called someone at Webster’s, because a scribe needed to be there to redefine the term “shiner”. This corpse was doing just that: Bruise after bruise after bruise all blended into one giant mass of swollen muscle and tissue. At a glance I would have believed him to be a victim of a dragon attack, or being at that point of impact where a trebuchet’s flaming barrel had landed. I held my hand over the mass of bruises, and there was still warmth coming from the corpse.

  “Yeah,” Jerry said. “Folks here aren’t sure how his body is doing that, but it’s still not the weirdest thing about our guy here.”

  A bushy red eyebrow arched at that. “Really? A guy getting pummeled repeatedly until he resembles a Cro-Magnon isn’t bizarre enough?”

  Jerry took a step back from the stiff and took in a deep breath. He was noodling something through, and I could see he wanted to tread very gently with this. “Billi, take a look at the body.”

  “Do I really have to? It’s already made an impression me.”

  “Look, I’m going with the evidence they’re telling me here. So, look at him.”

  I turned back to the multicolored corpse. “All right, I’m looking at him.” I tipped my Stetson to the guy’s distorted face. “How you doing, Handsome?”

  “Take a guess—how many hits to the body do you think it would take to do this kind of damage?”

  Fisticuffs are important as a training tool, for grappling, for physical conditioning, and for self-defense. I’m a regular at the gym to keep those skills sharp. You’ve got to be able to make that right hook count in my business, regardless if you’re going for a shot to the jaw or (in my case) the kneecap.

  So, while I’m no boxing pro, I know that you can take a pounding and still not resemble this poor dink on the slab. To do this kind of damage would take a lot of hammer blows, or a few hammer blows with some serious strength behind them.

  A vivid image of Kev, my pal from Acryonis’ front lines, popped into my noggin. One of the bigger Humans I’ve fought alongside, Kev was a monster in my eyes. A monster who always was a hell of a lot of fun to be around. One night, he took a challenge put to him by a few of the officers in the Allied Races. There was a Black Orc refugee from the Arannahi contingent giving his all on the battlefield for the good guys. While the wild card’s actions left no room for debate, there was lot of tension over him within the ranks. To show everyone that the Arannahi disciplines were deeply ingrained into this refugee—T’Kuras was his Arannahi-given name—the field commanders thought a boxing match between him and another member of the Allied Races would sate anxiety and apprehensions. Without question, Kev was the top choice, based on his massive size.

  Another reason Kev was tapped for this bout—his record on the battlefield. His village had been wiped out in a Black Orc raid, leaving him the sole survivor. A sole survivor who carried a hell of a grudge, making him a blade with an impeccable kill record. If anyone could stand up to an Orc in the ring, it was Kev.

  Everything started off friendly enough. Kev and T’Kuras put on a hell of a show; but in the fourth round things took a turn. The big palooka was tiring and his left eye was starting to swell up a bit. I shot a glance at T’Kuras, and he was only just starting to break a sweat.

  “Kev, how about we make this the last round?” I whispered as he returned to his corner “You’re doing great, my fri—”

  “End this fight now,” he hissed at me, “and the next one will be ours.”

  The crowd roared, ushering Kev back into the center of the ring. For T’Kuras, this was still a pleasant bout between allies. For Kev, it was quickly turning personal, as was evident when he let loose two quick jabs to the Orc’s kidneys.

  Okay, on a Human, where kidneys would be. Orc biology, as it goes with various races, is a little different from the average Human’s. But still, who knew genitalia could exist anywhere but between the legs?

  T’Kuras was still catching his breath when Kev leapt up, his fist cocked back behind his head. He brought it down as the Orc looked up. The sap’s head twisted, and a string of black ooze that I knew was blood flew out like a bullwhip and caught the Arannahs Human in his corner.

  We all knew it was a sucker punch and way out of the lines of a friendly spar, as was Kev’s foot slamming into the bridge of T’Kuras’ nose. When Kev loosed another two kicks to the Orc’s ribs, only a handful of people were cheering. Things were turning ugly. We all knew that.

  What we didn’t know was just how ugly things were about get.

  Kev’s tribal cry tore through the unnerving silence that had fallen over us. He leaped and seemed to suspend himself for a moment in the air…

  His descending fist was caught by another hand.

  Kev hit the ring so hard that the surrounding earth kicked up. That earlier mirth and even the strangely charming smile T’Kuras had been wearing back in his corner were gone. When his ebony hand wrapped around Kev’s thick neck, we all knew that T’Kuras was stepping back to his roots.

  The first slap made Kev’s entire body flinch to the left. The only reason he didn’t fly to the opposite side of the ring was that he still remained in T’Kuras’ grasp. His arms and legs were flung to the right by the force of the follow-up backhand. The Orc hoisted him up an inch higher, an undulating sound creeping from Kev’s parted lips.

  What suddenly struck me then wa
s the silence. We were stunned into stillness, watching all this unfold. This couldn’t be happening. Just a moment ago that monster was joking with the rest of us, enjoying a playful spar with…

  Kev’s body slammed hard against the ground again, snapping me back into the moment. Other Arannahi—four total—were stepping into the ring, surrounding their Orc and chanting something in what I guessed was their native tongue.

  The Orc’s chest was still heaving, but more slowly than when he’d been beating the shit out of Kev. We all watched T’Kuras’ berserker gaze surrender to a realization, like dawn over a hilltop bringing a new day to a shire. As he started piecing together what he was doing, the rage slipped away from his face. That tower of black fur, muscle, and power collapsed to his knees and buried his scarred face into his own blood-stained hands.

  The thing…was crying?

  Just when I thought I had seen everything, the sun rose on a new day. When I went to pay Kev a visit at the healer’s tent, I parted the flap and froze. Sitting next to my pal was T’Kuras. The Orc, with two Arannahi behind him, was applying a variety of ointments to Kev’s bruises and scars. If Kev flinched, T’Kuras’ own hands whipped clear of his body. The skittish behavior made both Human patient and Orc nursemaid chuckle.

  From those few days, I took away three images I would not soon forget, even when setting up my farm on the Everlasting Fields. I saw an Orc cry, I saw an Orc play cleric to a Human, and I saw what someone looked like after getting into a fistfight with an Orc.

  It was amazing what you could apply from my past into the here and now.

  “Well, Jer,” I began, playing that fight over and over in my head, counting the punches exchanged between Kev and T’Kuras, “whoever ganged up on this poor guy probably lost count while dishing it out. Maybe around fifteen swings with a bat, ‘cause I don’t think anything—in Chicago—could do this bare-fisted. I’m thinking you’re looking at a guy or a group of guys with a lot of anger towards the Baltimore Mariners.” I looked back at Jerry, tipping the Stetson further back on my head. “Considering the severe ass-kicking these guys gave our beloved Cubbies yesterday, I’m thinking you’re looking at a suspect list thirty to fifty thousand deep. Where do you want to start? North Side, or South?”