Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs

by Jamie Sedgwick

  Butch nodded towards Vinnie’s cell without taking his eyes off his cards. “They won’t eat,” he said.

  I glanced over and saw the tray of food sitting on the floor just inside the cell. Vinnie was sitting on the cot in the dark corner with his back pressed up against the wall. “Both of them?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s strange. They can’t hear each other… are they communicating somehow?”

  Butch shrugged. “Two pairs,” he announced, setting his cards on the table. Kal and Mickey grumbled as they threw their cards down.

  I walked over to the cell and looked Vinnie up and down. He looked pathetic, ragged. His already pale skin looked almost white and there were dark shadows under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept or eaten since I’d arrested him. “Morning, Vinnie. Is there a problem with your food?”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’m on a hunger strike.”

  I glanced around the cell, trying to figure out how Vinnie and Julius had been communicating. Then I remembered seeing Julius meditating. The two of them must have been communicating telepathically. I wondered what other schemes they had cooked up while I was gone.

  “Hunger strike, huh? That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  “Okay.” I turned away and then looked back at him, over my shoulder. “You know Vinnie, elves don’t really need food the way humans do. Your body takes nutrients from its environment, kind of like the way trees do. The less you eat, the more efficient your body becomes. You could probably starve yourself in that cell for a year and not die.”

  He blinked and sat upright. “A year?” he said.

  I smiled. “Just something to think about.”

  “But Butch said if we went on a hunger strike, you might feel sorry for us and let us go early!”

  I shot Butch a glare. He tried to ignore me as he dealt another hand of cards. Sometimes he’s more trouble than he’s worth. “Don’t count on it,” I growled.

  I walked around the corner and down the stairs to Julius’ cell on the lower level. He was pacing back and forth. He had thrown his tray of food against the wall, and smashed what was left into the floor. I also noted that his knuckles were bloody from punching the tree trunk walls. As soon as he saw me, he started shrieking. “I want my lawyer, Mossberg! Who do you think you are, keeping me locked up in here?”

  “Lawyers are for humans, Jules, remember? Besides, do you really want to go down that road?” I leaned up against the wall. “Look at it like this. Right now, you’re in on a minor infraction. No physical harm was done, so the Mother tree probably won’t keep you here long. Usually it’s less than six months. And when she decides your time is up, you’ll walk out of here a free elf.

  “Or, we could get you a lawyer. He’ll petition the Elders for a trial. It’ll take a year or so for them to make up their minds. Then they’ll set a date, which might be another year. Then we’ll have to locate witnesses and impartial jurors, all of whom will be paid by you. Then there will be a trial, and you’ll be on the hook for every penny unless you’re found innocent. Considering the fact that Annie and I will both testify against you, it doesn’t look good. Plus, I’ll have two years to track down your entire history, and I guarantee you that every person you’ve ever wronged will be sitting in that courtroom. So my suggestion to you is that you just wait it out and try to behave yourself… I see you’re on a hunger strike, too. I hope you don’t believe what Butch has been saying about getting out of here early.”

  He smiled grimly. “Butch hasn’t said anything, but if he did I’d do exactly the opposite.”

  I didn’t bother explaining to Julius what I’d just told Vinnie about the hunger strike. It would’ve been a waste of breath. “Here’s the situation: I wanted you to testify against your brother in exchange for early release, but there’s no point in that now that he’s dead. I’m still going to keep you here on the extortion charge. That’s the way it works. I expect you’ll be out in a few months with good behavior.”

  “Dead?” he said. “Who’s dead? What are you talking about?”

  I stroked the stubble on my chin thoughtfully. I’d assumed Butch and the others would have told Julius about his brother. Oops. Me and my big mouth. “Anthony was killed last night at the hearing,” I said. I suppose there’s a tactful way to say that, but I wasn’t too worried about it considering who I was talking to.

  Julius grabbed the roots that made up the cell door and stared at me. “What are you talking about, Steward? Are you trying to mess with my head?”

  “He was poisoned,” I said. “Do you know anyone who would have wanted to kill your brother? It would have been somebody here in the tree, someone who had access to his food…”

  Julius looked utterly befuddled. “I don’t know… you’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what to say, Julius. I thought you already knew. I’m sorry.” I did actually feel sorry for him, a little. I could see him trying to convince himself that it was a lie, that I was still trying to wring a confession out of him. He looked completely devastated.

  “It’s the truth. I’ve got to figure out who it was and why they did it, and I don’t have much time.”

  Julius turned away from me. He started pacing again. He crossed the cell twice before he came back. “Let me out of here,” he said. “I’ll find out who it was!”

  “I can’t do that, Julius. You know that.”

  “That’s not fair! My brother’s dead, Mossberg. I’ve gotta get out of here!”

  “Sorry.” I turned away and then paused. A thought had popped into my head. “What can you tell me about the Orzo family?”

  Julius’ face darkened. “Orzo… you’re kidding, right?” He gripped the vines in his hands so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “If this had something to do with them…”

  “So it’s true?” I said. “Are the Orzos moving in on your territory?”

  “Ha! The Orzos are a bunch of hillbillies. They couldn’t hurt us if they tried.”

  “Then what do they have to do with it?” I said. “What’s the problem between the Kaisers and the Orzo family?”

  Julius clamped his mouth shut. “I don’t have to talk to you,” he said. He stomped across the cell and dropped onto the cot. I watched him for a moment.

  “Fine,” I finally said. “You’re right, you don’t have to talk to me, but the trail’s getting colder by the minute. If you don’t help me find the killer now, we may never catch him.”

  Julius smiled darkly. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.

  I returned to the front room where the boys had just finished another hand of poker. “Butch, what did you learn about Shulzy and the Orzo family?”

  “Not much,” he said. “Shulzy moved to the city a year ago and has been working here most of that time. The rest of the family lives up in Humboldt. From what I can tell, they’re a bunch of real dirt bags.”

  “How so?”

  “They’ve got a reputation,” he said. “The local fae don’t even talk to them.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s the problem with them?”

  He lowered his cards and stared at me. “How should I know? Imagine what it would take to get blacklisted in Humboldt.”

  I thought about it. If Humboldt is famous for anything, it’s the backwoods marijuana farms. They aren’t run by nice people. The county officials actually warn tourists to stay out of the woods for their safety. Occasionally, people have wandered into the mountains there and never returned, and it’s not because they got trapped by a fairy ring. Humboldt seemed like the kind of place where the Orzos would fit right in, especially because no matter what they did, nobody would call the cops. The last thing anyone around there would want is for the police to be snooping around.

  Once I’d thought about it, I realized that left quite a bit of wiggle room. The Orzos could have been up to just about anything. They would have chosen the area spec
ifically because of its reputation. That much was obvious. But I was still missing something. The Orzos wouldn’t be involved in marijuana or anything like that. Fae don’t even use human drugs, and goblins don’t care much for competition. So why the remote, isolated area?

  “Pixie dust!” I said, snapping my fingers. “The Orzos are the source? The Orzos are making the pixie dust?”

  Butch threw his hand of cards on the table. “I fold,” he muttered. Kal let out a whooping sound and gathered up the pile of nickels from the center of the table. Butch looked at me. “I don’t know that for a fact,” he said. “The rumor is that the Orzos are runnin’ a pixie farm. They have a place way out in the mountains. That’s just rumor mind you, but it ain’t hard to believe.”

  “Nice job, Butch. I guess it’s time to have a talk with Shulzy.”

  “He works the dinner shift. You got a few hours.”

  I checked my watch. “Right.”

  Butch reached down next to my desk and lifted a box from the floor. I hadn’t noticed it there until he picked it up. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s from Roxy Paton.”

  “Oh, I asked her for some records.” He handed it to me. It was surprisingly heavy. I glanced at my desk and decided not to open it up there. I didn’t want to break up Butch’s poker game, and I had no desire to let his friends peruse all of Roxy’s private information. “I’ll go through this upstairs. I’ll check in with you later.”

  “Sure thing, Boss. Call if you need help.” He didn’t sound the least bit sincere, but I suppose it was nice of him to say it.

  When I got to my apartment, I set the box down on the kitchen table and cut it open. Roxy had stuffed it with photos, records, and names from every class and social group that Jenny had ever been involved in, going back years. Roxy had even included pictures of the instructors and the other students, and handwritten notes regarding her thoughts on the people involved. I also found a list of her clients that Roxy had worked with, though according to her notes she doubted it would do much good. Roxy kept her personal life and her business life separated. None of her customers had ever met Jenny, and only a handful of her employees knew the girl.

  I scanned the list for half an hour, looking at pictures and trying to match them up with names. I didn’t see anything that jumped out and grabbed me. I couldn’t see any reason that any of those people would have a motive to kidnap Jenny. I finally threw the papers down on my desk, frustrated. It would take weeks to track down all those people and question them. I’d be better off just waiting for the kidnappers to call. Only it didn’t look like they were going to call. Jenny had been gone for two days now and not a word. I felt like there was some missing component, something I had overlooked. I was beginning to wonder if Roxy had been entirely truthful with me.

  The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts. It was Solomon. “I’ve got that information for you,” he said. “I’m not sure you’re gonna like it, though.”

  “Why? What’s the problem?”

  “The poison used to kill Anthony wasn’t anything I’ve ever seen before. The chemical properties had been altered, using magic.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? Why would somebody alter a poison?”

  “They didn’t. They chemically altered the wine, sort of. It had another element that was added to it, something that could only have been conjured.”

  “And what was that?”

  “An ethereal element called shinaza. It’s not something you’d normally find on this plane. It doesn’t exist here naturally, which is why it disappeared so quickly. I only found trace particles of it in Anthony’s bloodstream.”

  “So you’re saying someone summoned a poison from a different dimension, and added it to his wine?”

  “Yeah, but it’s even more complicated than that. Shinaza isn’t a poison on its own. It only becomes toxic when combined with tartaric acid.”

  “Tartaric acid?”

  “Yeah. Whoever pulled this off really knew what he was doing. Unlike other fruits that contain mostly citric or malic acid, grapes have mostly tartaric acid.”

  I let out a low whistle. “So whoever did this not only knew how to bring this shinaza stuff from a different dimension, they also knew that it would only be a poison when it was combined with wine.”

  “Exactly. Now keep in mind, this isn’t just an ordinary poison. It was potent enough to kill a one-hundred year-old elf. Whoever killed Anthony really knew what they were doing. And I bet they’ve done something like this before, because you don’t learn this stuff by accident.”

  My mind flashed back to the night of the murder. Whoever had killed Anthony had the skills and the knowledge to summon shinaza and turn it into a highly toxic poison. There weren’t more than a few dozen people that could do that in the entire world. That night, the room just happened to be full of them. It didn’t make sense, though. The ascended masters are above trivial things like murder. They’re above the mundane. They don’t care if a person lives or dies.

  “Thanks for your help, Solomon. You really came through for me.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Hey, while I have you on the line, I met Roxy Paton this morning...”

  “What did you find out?” Solomon said.

  “Not much. I can’t figure out how the kidnapper pulled it off. It doesn’t seem humanly possible.”

  “I know. That’s why I referred Roxy to you. You’re the one with the expertise in that field.”

  “So you think it was a fae of some sort?” I said.

  “I don’t know what else it could be. Don’t you have some way of knowing if a fae creature has been in the house?”

  “Yeah,” I said grudgingly. “If only I could find it.”

  Solomon laughed. “Well, let me know if you need anything. And good luck with your Kaiser case. You’re gonna need it.”

  “Thanks.” The line went dead and Solomon’s voice echoed through my mind, repeating that phrase over and over: Good luck… you’re gonna need it.

  In my mind, I ran back over the list of suspects. I’d interviewed all of Chef Malachi’s employees, but I was going to talk with Shulzy again as soon as he came in for work. Who did that leave? Really, it was just the Elders as far as I could tell. I thought about it for a while and decided that if I was going to consider the Elders suspects, I might as well go straight to the top. I had the time to go interview Magnus now, before Shulzy Orzo came in for his shift. I decided to start there. I picked up the phone and rang up Butch in the jail.

  “I’ve got to leave. If Shulzy gets here before me, keep an eye on him.”

  “Will do, Boss. Where ya goin’?”

  “I’ve got to see a wizard about a murder.”

  “Oh,” he said quietly. “Which one?”

  “Magnus.”

  I could almost hear him frowning through the phone line. “Right. Good luck with that.” He hung up.

  Everybody wishes me luck but nobody wants to help, I thought.

  Magnus’ tower on Telegraph Hill is not the largest in the city, but it’s probably the most breathtaking. Like most wizard towers, it has a wide base that narrows towards the pinnacle. There are dozens of windows at varying levels, and a number of catwalks and balconies along the outside perimeter. The walls are made of what appears to be carved ivory. I had never seen the tower up close, so I had to admire it for a moment when I first drove up. As I sat there gazing up at it, I noticed that it seemed to disappear in my peripheral vision. If I turned my head quickly, I could see the outline of an apartment building in the place where the tower stood. That must have been the spell Magnus used to keep the place hidden from humans. The spell was powerful enough that even someone as dense as me could get a sense of it. I doubted he had any problems with unwanted humans snooping around.

  A tall stone fence encircled the grounds around the tower and I walked up to the wrought iron gate, wondering what sort of enchantments I was about to encounter. I probably should have cal
led first. The problem with that was that I wanted to catch Magnus off guard. If he knew I was coming, he’d have lots of time to rehearse his alibi, or concoct stories to cover for the other elders. I didn’t want him to have that much time to think about it.

  To the right of the gate rested a black metal mailbox with a shiny brass lion’s head on the front. As I approached, I glanced at the thing and I could have sworn it smiled at me. I paused, scratching my forehead. I decided my eyes must have been playing tricks on me because if it had been magic, it wouldn’t have affected me. I reached out to push the gate open.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the lion said.

  I jerked my head around and stared at it. “You uh… you wouldn’t?” I glanced around, somewhat nervous that I might be seen talking to a mailbox.

  “Nope! Definitely not.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Can’t tell.” The lion grinned.

  “You can’t tell me, or you don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  I pulled my hat off and ran a hand through my hair. “Is that you, Magnus?”

  “Of course not! I’m a mailbox.”

  “Is Magnus here?”

  “Well, this is his tower. You don’t suppose he’s living in someone else’s tower, do you? Oh my goodness! What if he moved and didn’t tell me? This is awful!”

  I shook my head and put my hat back on. Then I reached out and shoved the gate open. Tiny sparks exploded around my hand and shot up around me like fireworks. Clearly, it was some sort of protective spell, but it didn’t have any effect other than surprising me a little. I walked through the gate and up the stone path towards the front stairs. Sparks continued going off around me, shooting out from under my shoes and spiraling up into the air.

  I was halfway to the tower when a roar from behind me froze me in my tracks. It was so loud and so booming that it shook me right to the guts. I turned slowly around and saw a lion standing at the end of the path. A big lion. It appeared to be made of brass, and stood about eight feet tall at the shoulders. It was massive, and it didn’t look happy.