by Alex P. Berg
“I need to call in that favor,” I said, rubbing my fist with my free hand. “I need you to help me track down Bonesaw, Kyra.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding. You do remember what that psychopath did to me, right? He tied and gagged me, cut off my finger, and probably would’ve raped and murdered me if you and your police friends hadn’t come along. As it was, he…” She shivered. “Well, he got plenty.”
“Which is why I need you to help me find him,” I said. “Someone came after me last night. Evidence suggests it was his buddies. Now Steele’s gone, and while I don’t have a scrap of evidence to support it, I’ll be damned if he’s not behind it, too. You think he’s going to treat her any better than he did you? All you did was catch his eye and piss him off. She and I put the bastard in jail. Besides, who’s to say he won’t come after you again after he’s done with us?”
Kyra looked into my eyes. Hers were amber in color to Shay’s azure pools, but they were captivating nonetheless. “You love her, don’t you?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
Kyra regarded me for a little longer before snorting and looking away. “Can’t say I’m surprised. I had my hopes for you, but you were always too much of a do-gooder.”
I caught a snippet of something from Rodgers and Quinto’s direction, a hushed “Are you kidding me?” if my hearing wasn’t failing me. If so, this was so not the appropriate time for that.
“Are you going to help me or not, Kyra?”
She sighed. “You sure know how to pull on a gal’s heartstrings. Like I’d abandon your partner to a fate worse than I went through after you tell me that. But I’m not sure how helpful I can be. I haven’t seen Bonesaw since you dragged him off to jail.”
“But you knew him beforehand,” I said. “When I first met you, Bonesaw was there. When we all tried out to join the Wyverns. You spoke to him with a level of familiarity. You guys worked together at one point?”
Kyra shook her head. “We’d heard of each other, that was it. I never did a job with him, thank goodness.”
“But you’re still in the game. You have contacts.”
Kyra leaned back a little. “I’m not entirely sure what you mean by game.”
“Gods damn it, Kyra, I’m not playing around! I told you I’m not here for you. You could tell me you have five thousand golden crown from the city’s strategic reserve in your bedroom, and I wouldn’t bat an eye. I’m here for Shay. Are we clear?”
Kyra had the wherewithal to look chagrined. “Yeah. Right. Sorry. I’ll do what I can. Ask around. See if anyone knows anything. You got anything else to go on other than a suspicion that Bonesaw’s out and that he’s behind everything?”
“He might be in a new gang. The guys who tried to separate my guts from my stomach last night had tattoos on their inner forearms. Bonesaw has one, too.” I stuck a hand in my jacket pocket for one of the sketches before remembering they were still in my leather jacket at my place. “It’s a simple design. Three lines, the outer ones at a bit of an angle from the inner one, with some bunched half-circles at the end. I can draw it if you like.”
Kyra didn’t say anything, but her brow furrowed slightly, and the tiniest of gaps opened between her lips.
“—or, I’m guessing I don’t have to draw it. You’ve seen it before.”
“What?” The confused look disappeared. “No. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“The new gang part. I’ve heard a rumor.”
“Just one?”
“None, if we’re being honest,” said Kyra. “More like a scrap here, two-fifths there, and brain power on my end to fill in the gaps. But you might be right. There may be a new gang forming. Let me look into it, and I’ll get back to you.”
That was probably my cue to leave. I didn’t. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“You presume you don’t, rather,” said Kyra. “But I know what you mean. I’ll work as quickly as I can.”
Now I stood. “Send for me as soon as you know anything. Preferably within the next few hours. Any more than that…”
I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.
I think Kyra understood. She stood and put a hand to my elbow, just for a second. “Go. I’ll be in touch.”
I turned and nodded to Rodgers and Quinto. They led the way out.
Rodgers gave me a nod as I closed the door to her apartment behind me. “Think she’ll uncover anything?”
“I have no choice but to believe she will.”
Rodgers swallowed hard. He got my gist.
“What now?” said Quinto. “The Captain left you in charge. Unless you don’t feel fit for the task.”
I gave him the fisheye. “What are you implying?”
He shrugged, as innocently as he could. “You’ve looked better.”
I realized I was still clenching my fist. I shook it loose. “I’m fine. Tell you what though. I need to get the hell out of this suit. After that? I’ll think of something.”
I led the way down the stairs, mostly because I knew the best route to my apartment, but also because Rodgers and Quinto would’ve been suicidal to get in my way. Not that I’d ever hurt them. Not on purpose.
19
The CSU team had cleared out of my apartment by the time I returned, and a heavyset, bearded cop by the name of Gorman had spelled Phillips—thankfully. If he’d still been there I would’ve had a word with someone about his workload. Not that Phillips had seemed annoyed about putting in extra hours when I’d seen him earlier. On the contrary, he’d been only too happy to assist, and that was before Steele went missing.
I shook my head as I crossed into my bedroom. Here I was, still recovering from a near-lethal three story vertical plunge less than twenty-four hours ago, wracked with anger, fear, and guilt over Steele’s disappearance, and I couldn’t keep myself from worrying over Quinto and Rodgers’ feelings or Phillips’ free time. It wasn’t long ago that Rodgers and his cart-sized partner were the subjects of my constant ribbing, and as for Phillips? I spent the first year of his tenure calling him Phelps. What had Shay done to me? Drugged me? Put me under a decidedly non-psychic spell? Turned me into a better person?
Maybe too good of a person, I thought as I stripped off my suit and slipped back into my work attire, making sure to take the prison letters from my sport coat before hanging it. I threw my leather jacket over my shoulders and checked the pocket. My fingers wrapped around Daisy, the cold from the metal seeping into my fingers.
They tightened. A better person, yes. But not too good to bash a face or twenty in if necessary. Whatever it took to get Shay back in one piece. Whatever it took.
Quinto and Rodgers met me in the hallway, and together we headed toward the precinct. I got about three-quarters of the way there before surprising them, hooking a right onto 7th.
Quinto was brave enough to call me on it. “You come up with a new avenue you want to pursue?”
I pointed a half a block up the street to a three story brick building flanked on one side by a bakery. “I wouldn’t say new. Zaldane and Associates, unless they’ve changed their address. Remember them?”
“The authentication firm,” said Quinto. “You planning on having them look at the forgeries from Coldgate?”
“What else am I going to do with them?”
Quinto shot me a reproachful look. “I was under the impression you’d hand them to internal affairs. If anyone, they’re the ones who might be able to trace a path from the cop who assisted Bonesaw to the forger and back to Bonesaw.”
“I’ll give the letters to internal affairs as soon as I let Zaldane and company look at them.”
“What are you hoping to get anyway?” asked Quinto. “Confirmation that Bonesaw’s letter is a forgery?”
“Something like that. Look, if you don’t want to come, that’s fine. I can meet you back at the precinct. Or you can pursue a different avenue after Steele and my
attempted murderers. Divide and conquer.”
Rodgers cleared his throat. “That’s going to be a no-go, Daggers.”
I glared at him, too. “Look, I know the Captain put me in charge, but you’re not babies. Use your brains. With Steele gone, we have more threads to pull on then men to do the pulling.”
“You think we’re tagging along because we’re out of ideas?” Rodgers snorted. “And you’re telling us to use our heads. Daggers, you were nearly murdered last night. We’re all hoping for the best with Steele, but… Look, the point is the Captain made it clear we’re not to let you out of our sight.”
“When?”
“Before we left. You might’ve been too much inside your own head to notice.”
If so, that wasn’t good. I grunted to confirm I’d heard him and made my way to the offices.
I found them on the third floor. The front door, a frosted glass and wood affair that would’ve felt at home at either a law firm or a private detective’s office, swung open at my touch. Inside I found as orderly and symmetric an arrangement as one could hope for. A square room with a neatly trimmed potted tree in each corner, a quartet of desks, and moveable dividers organized in the middle, all aligned neatly in parallel with the walls.
To be fair, I could only see the front two desks from my vantage point, but given the symmetry of what was visible to the eye, I rather doubted the two cubicles in back contained avant-garde furniture, colorful shag rugs, and a collection of tribal instruments.
A woman’s head popped up from behind one of the partitions at the sound of our entrance. It was a rather birdlike motion, quick and precise and with a sharp turn of her head. Her short spiky hair, thin bifocals, and sharp features didn’t make her any less avian, though her navy suit was on the mundane side. Then again, it was male birds who tended to have elaborate plumage, weren’t they?
“Can I help you?”
“Ms. Clure, right?” I rounded the nearest cubicle to get to hers, Quinto and Rodgers following me.
“That’s correct,” she said. “You’re with the police department?”
I nodded. Turns out we were all on our deductive game at the moment. “You worked with us a year back on a forgery case. Got a pair of new items I need your expertise on.” I pulled the letters I’d confiscated from Coldgate Prison out of my jacket and held them forward.
She adjusted the glasses as she brought the pages toward her. “More suspected forgeries? Hopefully part of a different case.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “Indeed. I’m not here to test your memory, just your professional skills. Both of those letters were delivered to Coldgate Prison upon completion of prisoner transfers. I have reason to believe the one on your left, the one that references a prisoner by the name of Dugruk, is a fake.”
Ms. Clure kept her eyes on the letters. “And you’re here, what? For confirmation?”
“At a bare minimum, yes,” I said. “Hopefully much more. Understanding the art of forgery is your specialty. Part of understanding and recognizing forgeries is to also recognize forgers, and I’m in the market for names. I need to know who was responsible for this forgery yesterday, and find out where they live even sooner than that. I’m hoping someone at your firm can help me with that.”
Clure turned her cold, piercing eyes on me. “What was your name again, Detective?”
“Daggers.”
“Right. Detective Daggers, first of all, let me point out that our firm doesn’t operate on a drop in, drop out basis. We schedule appointments in advance. It makes the accounting easier and ensures we give each case its due attention.”
My teeth clenched. “Ms. Clure, I don’t have—”
“—but I’m willing to cut you a little leeway because you’re clearly agitated, and my experience with men in your profession who come in with scowls rivaling yours and teams of backup behind them is entirely negative. I should point out, however, that I’m not as familiar with forgers as you seem to think I am. None of my firm’s employees are. We’re familiar with the classical examples, the famous ones, but I can’t be of much help in locating individuals who are currently in the game, so to speak. Not that you need to find any forgers, at the moment.” She held out the letters.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The letters.” She gave them a shake for emphasis. “They’re not fakes. They’re copies.”
I took them back slowly. “I’m not following you.”
“They were made with a polygraph.”
Rodgers gave the question voice before I could. “A poly-what?”
“A duplicating device,” said Clure. “A combination of two or more pantographs, or mechanical linkages, that can be used to write two or four or perhaps eight copies of an identical letter at the same time. That’s why you assumed these were forgeries, I assume. Because the scripture is nearly identical. As it should be.”
“Scripture…?” I organized the pages one over the other and held them to the nearest window as I’d done at Coldgate. The signatures overlapped perfectly, but so did much of the rest, with the exception of Bonesaw and the other prisoner’s name, the date, and a brief closing line at the end of the letter. How hadn’t I noticed?
“You mentioned these are prisoner transfer letters? Confirming receipt of the prisoners in question?” said Ms. Clure.
“That’s right.”
“It’s not surprising then that a polygraph was employed,” she said, pointing at the writing. “Imagine writing so many of these letters, all stating the same thing. Much easier to write them four or eight at a time. Then the scribe in charge of the letters can come back and fill in the pertinent details later, along with a signature. It’s a simple time saving maneuver.”
“So…you’re saying the letters are legitimate?” I said. “That Bonesaw was transferred to Stinking Baths after all.”
Clure shook her head. “Detective Daggers, I can’t say anything to their legitimacy. The letters are pre-prepared. Someone could’ve taken one and added this individual’s name to it after the fact. And before you ask, no, I can’t say with any certainty whether or not the warden, bailiff, or clerk who wrote these filled in both sets of names and dates. Both sets of hand-added text are similar enough in nature, but I need more of a sample size to make a definitive estimation.”
“Daggers.”
I turned at the sound of Quinto’s heavy voice. “Yeah?”
His face was drawn. “This could be even worse that we’d originally thought. If what Ms. Clure says is true, then not only do we have a security problem at Coldgate, but Stinking Baths might have a similar problem. We need to involve internal affairs immediately.”
“You may be right, but internal affairs isn’t going to help us find Steele, Quinto.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “Or maybe not right away. But this goes deeper than we thought. We’re not just dealing with forgers anymore. Bonesaw or not, whichever group is behind this has roots that burrow deep.”
“Fine.” I pocketed the letters. “Not like we’re going to get much else out of this. Ms. Clure? Thanks for lending us your eyes.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a loan, Detective. Your department will receive an invoice shortly.”
Of course they would. My subconscious felt like it should complain, but money was the absolute last thing on my mind at the moment.
20
After arriving at the precinct, Rodgers, Quinto, and I headed to the top floor, skirted the tightly packed morass of desks and dividers in the middle, and headed for the only real office on the floor, squirreled away in a corner and out of the way. Unlike the Captain’s on the main floor, this one wasn’t fitted with a barrage of windows, rather just one. Its blinds were drawn.
I knocked on the door. After a few seconds, I heard a voice. “Come in.”
I cranked on the knob and let myself into Jameson Hunt’s office. Technically, Hunt wasn’t a detective, at least not a capital ‘D’ Detectiv
e under the jurisdiction of the NWPD. The internal affairs unit operated under a jurisdiction independent of ours, one that encompassed police, fire, and corrections and ultimately answered to the chiefs of each of those departments and to a board of civilian deputy commissioners appointed by the mayor. Only the military branches had a separate set of internal investigators, which I’d discovered several months ago after an encounter with one Agent Blue.
Hunt sat behind his desk, pen in hand. He was a square-shaped man, with broad shoulders, a straight up and down neck, and a jaw with three distinct sides. His flattop only added to his boxy nature, and the horseshoe mustache he wore, shaved with right angles, seemed like a bad joke. Maybe the man had a secret, unresolved love for cubism.
He flicked his cool blue-grey eyes up only long enough to identify us before turning them back to his page. “Daggers. Quinto. Rodgers. What can I do for you?”
Hunt didn’t fraternize with the guys at the precinct—I’m pretty sure if he did it would be grounds for his expulsion—but he still knew everyone in the building by name. By contrast, I’d been around for over a decade and still didn’t recognize half the officers I bumped into. Then again, I wasn’t a cold lump of inhuman flesh masquerading as a person.
“We’ve got a serious problem, Hunt,” I said.
“Correction. You’ve got a serious problem.”
“Excuse me?”
He refused to look up from his page, scribbling away. “Or so I assume. But you have to understand that your problems are not my problems. We’re under different chains of command, or did you forget?”
The anger brewed inside me, restless and hot. Any other day I could deal with Hunt’s raging indifference, but today?
“I’m not in the mood for this, Hunt. Are you even aware of what’s going on outside?”
“Should I be?”
