Daggers & Steele 1 - Red Hot Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  “No kidding.” We hadn’t seen even a hint of Blaze’s true powers, but based on the heat in his eyes when I accused him of murder, I didn’t want to. “His lawyer here yet?”

  “Just arrived,” said Quinto.

  “Great.” I eyed my partner. “You ready to do this?”

  Shay raised an eyebrow. “We’re going in there? Just like that? No letting him sweat it out for a half hour?”

  “Perspicacious Blaze isn’t some small time dope dealer. He’s a shrewd businessman who’s used to negotiating. He won’t crack under bright lights and mirrors. Besides, he’s already lawyered up. Best to confront him with the facts and see what he has to say.”

  “So no good cop, bad cop routine this time?” Shay asked.

  I shook my head. “No, we’ll play it straight. Just follow my lead. You’ll be fine.”

  Shay gave me one of those looks I’d come to associate with her suspicion.

  “I’m not pulling your leg,” I said as I stood. “Now come on.”

  Rodgers smiled from his desk as we walked by. “We’ll be waiting with a fire extinguisher outside the door in case something goes wrong.”

  “Don’t lie,” I said. “You’ve been eyeing my desk for years. You’d love to have me gone.”

  “And miss out on the beers you owe me?” Rodgers called. “Hah! You can’t escape me that easy, Daggers!”

  I heard Shay chuckle. I couldn’t help but snicker a little myself. For all their quirks, Rodgers and Quinto could always be counted on for a smile or two, but their timing in this instance wasn’t ideal. My partner and I were about to question a fire mage who could convert our entire station to flaming rubble if he so wished, and greeting him with a bucketful of laughs probably wasn’t the most appropriate way to engage him.

  Thankfully, the gravity of the situation exerted its weight on both of us by the time we arrived at the interrogation room.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  Shay nodded.

  I grabbed the knob to the chamber and twisted.

  45

  Charles Talent sat at the interrogation table, hands clasped in front of him like the two halves of a vise. His jaw, like the rest of his face, appeared as if carved from stone, and his eyes smoldered with restrained anger.

  A gray-suited lawyer with perfectly manicured designer stubble and a flashy pink tie sat to Talent’s right, a glossy, chocolate leather briefcase propped on the table before him. The man started to lawyer me and Shay before we’d made it halfway through the door.

  “Detectives Daggers? Steele?” he said. “I represent the legal council of Sir Charles Blaze Talent, the third. I’ll begin by informing you that I’ve already fully advised my client of his judicial rights, including but not limited to his right to remain silent, his right against forcible self-incrimination, his right to due process, and your judicial mandate to present evidence and charges against him within twenty-four hours of arrest. Otherwise, he must legally be released from custody, upon which he cannot be re-apprehended for the same crime without—”

  “What’s your name?” I asked stubble face as I sat. Shay took the seat to my left.

  “Brian Trustmont, esquire, of Merkel, Ernst, Trustmont, and Figs.”

  “Great,” I told him. “Now why don’t you invoke your own right to silence and shut the hell up. I’m not interested in what you have to say. I came to have a chat with Mr. Talent.”

  The lawyer stiffened like a certain male organ when presented with a firm female behind. When next he spoke, his tone was less accusatory, but also a good few degrees colder.

  “You’re free to talk, Detective, but I don’t believe my client is feeling particularly chatty at the moment.”

  I swept my eyeballs back and forth between the lawyer and Mr. Talent.

  “That’s alright,” I said. “As it turns out, I’m in more of a storytelling mood myself. Why don’t I tell you a story and you listen? It’s a story about a man by the name of Reginald Powers.”

  The lawyer rolled his eyes and snorted. I settled my eyes firmly upon the granite-faced fire mage and dove in.

  “Reginald Powers was born and raised in the Erming, but he was far from your typical slum rat. He was a smart guy. Clever and calculating, but also personable. Sure, he had sticky fingers like a lot of the other urchins down there. But his fingers were good for more than just filching. His fingers had a gift. A gift…for deception.

  “Reginald knew he could do better than the Erming. So he left. Looked around for the right landing spot, and eventually he found one. A local armory by the name of Drury Arms. Now, he could’ve worked hard—tried to climb the corporate ladder like any normal Tom, Dick, or Harry—but that wasn’t Reginald’s style. He had other plans.

  “He landed a job where he got paid by commission negotiating contracts for arms. The money would’ve been good if he had the knack for it, and as it turned out, he did. Reggie scored tons of contracts. More than Mr. Drury could’ve hoped for. There was only one small problem.

  “None of Reginald’s pacts existed. They were all faked—forged with the help of Reggie’s particular talent. The signed contracts? Bogus. The money to pay for them? Nonexistent. But the weapons contracted for? Well, those were real. Mr. Drury’s armory was churning them out in droves. Reginald could squirrel them away in a safe place and make a killing selling them bit-by-bit on the black market. And that’s where the second character in this particular tale enters. Reginald met you, Mr. Talent.”

  I expected some sort of reaction at that, but I got none, so I continued.

  “I’m sure the meeting was probably mere happenstance. You’re the largest metals supplier in the city, after all. It only makes sense you two would run across each other sooner or later. But then Reggie met your daughter—your young, single, only daughter, who was in line to inherit a very, very large sum of money in the not too distant future. And clever old Reginald thought to himself, ‘Well, if one con is good, two must be twice as nice.’ Besides, you’re easily ten times as rich as Mr. Drury.

  “And so he courted your daughter. Got her to fall in love with him. You, being the suspicious, cagey old geezer you are, naturally questioned his motives. So you had him sign a prenuptial agreement—which he did, but only grudgingly, to avoid suspicion. He pored over the agreement, trying to find a way out, but it was ironclad. Perhaps he asked you explicitly about annulling it, so you threatened to kick him out and expose him as a fraud to your daughter.

  “Well, Reggie didn’t like that, so he figured, why not combine his two cons using his natural talent for forgery. He prepared a series of documents showing in great detail how it was you, not him, who’d masterminded the actions at Drury Arms—documents that showed just how lucrative all of Mr. Drury’s deals had been for you personally. And Reginald used the documents to blackmail you, all in an effort to get the prenuptial agreement dissolved.

  “You refused to be intimidated. But Reginald wouldn’t quit, would he? Kept threatening? And you couldn’t go to the police over the whole matter because the truth fell a little too close to home, didn’t it? You knew Reggie’s scheme, and you willingly took part in it for financial gain. And to complicate matters, your daughter was truly in love with Reginald. Finding out the truth about him, and about you, would’ve crushed her—made her lose trust in you forever. So you did the only thing you could to protect yourself and your family from Mr. Powers’ threats and lies. You killed him. In cold blood, the night of the charity ball, behind the stage.”

  The silence stretched for several seconds after I finished my soliloquy. The tension in the room hung like a fog, sticky and thick. Perspicacious Blaze hadn’t so much as blinked during my speech. I wondered if rage-induced paralysis was another of his magical abilities and if he hadn’t managed to infect all of us with it when eventually the lawyer cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Well, that’s certainly an interesting story, Detective. But as I’m sure you’re well aware, we deal with facts and evidence in the
judicial realm, not fictitious tales.”

  Despite my earlier instructions to avoid the good cop, bad cop dynamic, my plucky partner apparently decided I’d been too nice. She leaned forward, jaw clenched, and gave the lawyer the stink eye—a look I’d only seen levied on me. I had to admit, it was pretty effective.

  “Detective Daggers was being uncommonly generous in calling it a story. By his own admission, Mr. Charles Talent was at the crime scene during the time of Reginald Powers’ murder, and the blackmail documents we found in his safe provide a clear, demonstrable motive for Mr. Talent to have committed the crime. That’s not a story. Those are facts. And we have the evidence to back them up.”

  Chucky broke his solemn vow of silence. “I’d never seen those documents before in my life until you unearthed them.”

  Stubble-face was quick to react. “You don’t have to answer any of their questions. Don’t let them provoke you.”

  “I know,” said Mr. Talent, silencing his lawyer with his fiery gaze. “But I have a right to defend myself as well as stay silent, don’t I Mr. Trustmont?”

  Appropriately cowed, the lawyer sat back in his chair and shut his trap. Apparently even hard-assed, filthy rich oligarchs like Charles Talent secretly detested lawyers, too—even if they were useful to their bottom lines.

  I rummaged around in my coat pocket and pulled out one of the blackmail documents we’d taken from the safe—a particularly damning piece of evidence tying together Reggie’s faked contracts and Charles’ own supplier’s deal with Drury Arms. I laid it on the table and pushed it towards Mr. Talent with an extended index finger.

  “So, let me get this straight,” I said. “Your argument for why you couldn’t possibly be Reginald Powers’ murderer is that you’ve never before seen the blackmail documents we found in your safe?”

  Charles rested his eyes on me, eyes that were fierce yet also tired. “Yes.”

  I sucked air in through my teeth. “Hmm. Color me unimpressed, Mr. Talent. That’s the second time today I’ve heard the ‘I’ve never seen that’ argument, and yours is about as convincing as the one I got from the dope-addled, tattooed dwarven gangbanger.” That statement raised an eyebrow but provoked little other reaction. “So you didn’t place those documents in your safe yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Who did then? Your butler? Little pixies? Fire motes dancing on the hot winds of change?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mr. Talent.

  We held each other’s gazes. Surprisingly, I won the standoff.

  Charles Talent sighed. “Look, Detective Daggers, I can’t believe it’s so difficult for you to see what’s going on here.”

  “You have an alternative theory?” I turned to my partner, stuck out my bottom lip, and spread out my hands. “What do you think, Steele? Should we hear his grand insights?”

  “Yes, let’s,” she said.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said the fire mage. “I’m not being blackmailed. I’m being framed. I’ve suspected as much ever since you first revealed how Mr. Powers met his demise. Clearly someone staged his death so as to appear that a conjurer of fire magic killed him.”

  I raised an eyebrow at the geezer. “And how do you know dear Reginald wasn’t killed by magic?”

  “Please, Detective. If you could prove that, I suspect you would’ve put me in shackles the instant you discovered it. Not to mention you would’ve included that particular piece of evidence in your ‘story,’ as you called it.”

  “You know, it’s interesting you bring that up,” I said as I tapped my chin. “Do you know how Reginald actually died, Mr. Talent?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said.

  “By a thermite reaction. Do you know what thermite is?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Detective. Of course I do. We use thermite at the foundry in the purification of certain metal ores. My talent isn’t the only intense source of heat we employ.”

  “So you admit you had ready access to the murder weapon?” I said.

  “Anyone at any of my facilities would,” said Mr. Talent. “So would anyone at any of the other foundries and smithies in the city. Access to thermite doesn’t make me a murderer. Besides, as you were so quick to point out in our first encounter, I’m a fire mage. If I wished to murder Reginald by fire, why would I bother to use as crude a method as thermite?”

  “Probably because you knew we’d eventually discover the true cause of his death wasn’t magical in nature,” I said, “and you assumed that fact would shift suspicion from you to someone else.”

  “That’s wild speculation and you know it,” said the gray-suited lawyer.

  I sighed and drummed my fingers on the table, refusing to let silence fill the air. “When was the last time you opened your safe, Mr. Talent?”

  “Yesterday morning, after you came by.”

  “And does anyone besides you have the combination to open it?”

  “Only my daughter.”

  Interesting. I pulled on my earlobe. “So…you’re going to maintain you’d never seen these documents—” I tapped the one on the table. “—before today, and when you opened your safe yesterday, they weren’t there?”

  “Yes,” he said tersely. “I will maintain that. Because it’s the truth.”

  Shay spoke up again, this time in a smooth, confident tone. “You know something interesting about thermite, Mr. Talent? It requires a rather intense heat source to ignite the reaction—heat that’s quite difficult to provide under normal circumstances. Unless the person igniting the thermite happens to be a fire mage.”

  Charles Talent glared at Shay, the smolder returning to his eyes in full force. “I think I’ve said all I plan to, detectives. If you wish to pursue your case against me, you’ll have to do so with what you currently have at your disposal.”

  46

  After closing the door to the interrogation room, I found a couple of nearby bluecoats and gave them instructions for dealing with the fiery sorcerer. I told them to escort Mr. Talent to our most deluxe holding cell, making sure they understood exactly who they were dealing with. I would’ve volunteered, but I needed to finalize the casework before sending it off to the DA. I think everyone involved wanted charges filed as soon as possible.

  By the time I’d finished talking to the boys, Shay had left. I found her back at her desk, staring at the corkboard’s crisscrossing weave of red yarn and thumbtacks.

  “You sure had some timely interjections back there.” I plopped into my chair.

  Shay glanced at me, blushing. “You mean that thermite bit? Sorry. I wasn’t trying to get him to stop talking. I thought maybe I could squeeze something else out of him. Some other piece of information we could use.”

  I waved her off. “Don’t sweat it. His jaw was like a steel trap on a timer—it was sure to snap shut sooner or later. You just helped him along, that’s all.”

  Shay chewed her lip. “So, what now?”

  “Now you get introduced to the most thrilling part of this profession—paperwork. We’ll to need to fill out a 1053B and a 459. You ever done that before?”

  Shay gave me a blank look.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Come on, I’ll show you where they are.”

  I rejoiced in silence. Showing my partner how to fill out the forms would mean more work for me in the short term, but once she knew what i’s needed to be dotted and what t’s needed to be crossed, I could foist the future paperwork on her. Delegating paperwork was one of the greatest joys of seniority—a joy Griggs had appreciated to its fullest. Now my turn to reap the rewards had finally arrived.

  I took Shay on a field trip to the form office. We picked out the proper pages from a wall of wooden dispensers. As we walked back to our desks, I explained the finer points of the 1053B, specifically how it differed from a 1053 and why there wasn’t a 1053A.

  Shay’s eyes glossed over. I couldn’t blame her. It was dry stuff. But something suggested to me the bland look she sported on her face wasn’t a direct
response to my form blather.

  “…and so that’s why you need a 1053B,” I said. “Now, a 1053C, on the other hand, is rare. You only need one of those if you accidentally kill a hobo in the line of duty.”

  Shay didn’t even blink.

  “Hey—you want to fill me in on what’s going on up there?” I pointed at her head.

  Shay startled. “Huh?”

  “Were you having one of those thingies again?”

  Shay pressed a hand to her forehead. “Not this again. I’ve told you, I only have visions—”

  “I didn’t say you were,” I said. “I said you looked like it. I know you were thinking. What’s on your mind?”

  Shay looked at me, and I mean really looked at me. Her azure blues delved into my gray matter, searching my subconscious for traces of sarcasm or doubt. The look might’ve staggered lesser men, but I’m made of sterner stuff. Beef and fermented grain, mostly.

  Regardless, the part of me that regulates interactions with women realized this was an important moment in our relationship. Shay was looking for something from me. A token of appreciation. A sign I occasionally took things seriously. An affirmation of trust.

  “Look, we’re partners now,” I said. “For better or worse. If you need to say something, go ahead and say it. I’ll listen.”

  Shay sat on the corner of my desk. “Ok.” That one short word held more meaning than it had any right to. I’d have to chew on the implications later. “Do you really think Charles Talent is our murderer?”

  I pressed my rear into my trusty throne. “The story fits. We’ve got motive and opportunity, not to mention plenty of evidence. I think we have a strong enough case to convict him.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” said Shay. “Do you think he killed Reginald Powers?”

  I took a moment to consult with my inner sense of justice. It tended to reside somewhere between my brain and gut—usually closer to the latter. “I’m not sure.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” she asked.