3 Time to Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A few months?”

  “Try two years,” said Rodgers.

  “Really?” I said. “No.”

  “I bet you don’t even know his last name,” said Quinto.

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Of course I do. It’s Boatreng.”

  “Boatreng is his first name,” said Rodgers.

  I blinked and shook my head. “You’re kidding. What’s his last name, then?”

  “Davis,” said Rodgers.

  “Boatreng Davis?” I said. “Are we sure his parents didn’t mistakenly swap his first and last names on his birth certificate?”

  “This is exactly what we’re talking about, Daggers,” said Steele. “You minimize everyone else. Turn everything into a joke. That’s why he dislikes you. Give him a chance. Talk to him. You’ll find he’s a pretty nice guy once you get to know him.”

  Shay smiled as she said that last part. Were we still talking about Boatreng, or had she snuck in a jab about me there at the end?

  “Hold on a moment,” I said. “You know Boatreng?”

  “Sure,” said Steele. “I introduced myself within a few days of starting here.”

  I looked around at my compatriots, and they all gave me same sort of look. I sighed. I wasn’t about to get any sympathy. “Alright. I’ll tell him about the sketch we need. And I’ll be civil. I just have one problem.”

  “Being?” said my partner.

  “I don’t know where his desk is,” I said.

  “Second floor, near the back stairs,” said Rodgers.

  I picked myself up, trudged up the stairs, and fumbled around on the second floor until I found Boatreng and his gleaming head near where Rodgers said I would.

  I cleared my throat. “Um…Boatreng?”

  “Yes?” he said, looking up from his work.

  “We’ve got another case that needs your expertise,” I said. “A bouncer at a club on Flatley, called the 9’s, saw someone who may have been involved in a murder. If you could head down there, that would be great. You know, when you get a chance.”

  The sketch artist looked at me quizzically. “Um…sure. I’ll get right on it.”

  “Thanks.” I turned before he could ask me what was wrong and headed back down the stairs. I found the gang huddled together where I’d left them, chuckling.

  “What did I miss?” I asked as I sat down.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Quinto as the mirth died down. “We were just mercilessly mocking you like a bunch of bratty schoolgirls.”

  “Sure you were,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Everyone here knows I’m the leader of this pack.”

  “A pack leader who likes to mix and match teenage girl and dog metaphors, apparently,” said Shay.

  I wanted to argue that witty, off-the-cuff comedy had an inherent fail rate and that I’d be happy if even forty percent of my barbs made others chortle, but I’d spotted a runner enter the precinct and head for the Captain’s office. The fleet-footed youngsters delivered messages around the city, and they knew if they brought useful news regarding cases back to our headquarters, they’d get paid for their efforts. I thought of them as similar to crows in terms of their portentous ability. They always brought bad news.

  “Uh-oh.” I pointed.

  The runner sped into the Captain’s quarters. Through the glass walls of the office, I saw the urchin whisper into the bulldog’s ear. The Captain’s eyes widened, and he stepped to the door. We all held our collective breath.

  “Detectives,” barked the Captain. “Looks like we caught a break. A neighbor reported a break-in at Darryl Gill’s apartment. If you hurry, you might be able to get there while the scent is still fresh.”

  I released my breath in a puff. “Good news from a runner? The stars must’ve aligned while we weren’t looking.”

  “Well, they’re going to unalign themselves if you don’t get moving.” Steele had already sprung out of her chair and snagged her coat.

  I followed her lead and called out to the Captain. “Boss, can you let Boatreng know to stop by Gill’s apartment after he’s finished at the 9’s?”

  My gruff-voiced commander-in-chief delivered a curt nod in response. Shay gave me a curious look out of the corner of her eyes, as if admonishing me for not doing it myself, but she couldn’t actually come out and say it. We needed to get back to Gill’s place, stat, and nobody could claim that trying to catch a thief and potential murderer in the act wasn’t a good reason for avoiding the shiny-headed sketch artist.

  12

  We had our pick of the litter of all the rickshaw drivers outside the precinct, so Shay and I enlisted the one that looked the healthiest and best fed and promised him an extra silver crown if he got us to Gill’s place in record time.

  We hadn’t even pressed our bottoms into the hardwood bench before our driver took off like a horse at a steeplechase. Foot traffic scattered before the guy as he booked it down the street pell-mell. Unfortunately, despite his superhuman effort fueled by the promise of enough silver for a gourmet dinner and a new pair of shoes, we couldn’t quite make it. The intruder had fled the scene by the time we arrived.

  I stood in the middle of Gill’s living room with my hands on my hips. When the morning crew had left, they’d transferred Gill’s body to the morgue so Cairny could continue her analysis, but otherwise, they’d left the place as it was, which meant the intruder had largely done the same. The furniture was where I remembered it, including the upholstered sofas and the coffee table and the eat-in with the chairs, but someone had gone through Gill’s desk.

  Files had been withdrawn and tossed on its surface, the pages within scattered—in search of what, who knew. I hadn’t searched through the documents myself for fear of contaminating the crime scene. I figured the lab techs would be on their way soon, and even though paper wasn’t an ideal surface for pulling prints, they’d gotten lucky in the past. From what I could see right off the bat, the documents on the desk weren’t financial in nature, nor were they related to Gill’s repo business in any way. Instead, they appeared to be letters. I spotted numerous names and signatures at the bottom, right-hand corners of the pages.

  The intruder had also rifled though Gill’s closet, turning coat and pants pockets inside out, and we’d found a few boxes of curios and collectibles—also from the closet—upended in the bedroom and sifted through. We’d never bothered going through the boxes and cataloging the belongings during our morning session in the apartment, so I had no idea if anything had been taken or not, but there didn’t appear to be anything of value among the remaining mementos.

  Given the evidence, two things stuck out to me. Based on the disorderly state of the letters and knickknacks in the bedroom, the intruder had been rushed. They knew we’d be back, which meant they knew about Gill’s murder. That meant there was a high probability the trespasser was our murderer. Second, the intruder was after information—personal information based on what we’d found upended in the apartment. That, in turn, meant Gill’s torture in the morning likely wasn’t passion or rage driven but rather information driven. Did the murderer come back because they didn’t get what they needed the first time around? Or were two parties after the same piece of knowledge?

  Shay walked into the living room from the bedroom, rubbing her chin between her index finger and thumb.

  “Find anything?” I asked. I’d done my own sweep of the premises, of course, but I’d learned to defer to Steele’s superior observational skills when analyzing crime scenes.

  “For once, I think I’m going to disappoint you,” she said. “No.”

  “You didn’t find any mysterious crumpled notes?” I said. “No used handkerchiefs or scuff marks from shoes or anything else that might help us identify who was here?”

  Shay shook her head. “Zilch. Just the curios and letters on the desk. Although I did notice something about the knickknacks in the bedroom.” She smiled and tilted her head almost imperceptibly.

 
I waited a moment before responding in kind. “Are you going to make me pull it out of you?”

  “You always do this to me,” she said. “You claim it increases the pleasure of the reveal.”

  “Well,” I said. “Is it working?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Steele. “I haven’t revealed anything yet.”

  “So hit me,” I said.

  “There are three piles of stuff from Gill’s boxes in the bedroom,” said Shay. “The contents of one seem to have been sifted through more than the other two. Another difference is the contents of the pile that received the most attention have more wear than the contents of the others. They’re older mementos.”

  “You think the intruder is after a clue from Gill’s past?” I asked.

  Shay snapped and pointed her finger at me.

  “Hmm.” I tapped a fist against my chin as I let that sink in. “Interesting. But more importantly…how did the reveal feel?”

  Shay shrugged. “About the same. I’m not sure why you love keeping things from the rest of us.”

  “Who knows? Maybe I was ignored as I child.”

  Shay raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. I hadn’t been ignored, but that didn’t mean my pint-sized years had been filled with puppies and rainbows. Between my mother being murdered when I was a spry thirteen, my father falling into a spiraling depression that forced me to care for my younger brother, and the resulting cycle of misery that steadily pushed the three of us apart, it was a miracle I’d blossomed into a somewhat functional, productive member of society.

  Thinking about my dad and brother made me realize how long it had been since I’d seen either of them. I told myself I should make a greater effort to mend the fences between us all, but I had enough trouble making time for the fruit of my own loins. I figured if anything, helping sculpt a well-rounded, mostly undamaged child was a better use of my time and energies than trying to glue the pieces of two broken relationships back together.

  I heard footsteps and turned to face them. Rodgers walked in through the front door with a charge in tow—a square-faced guy wearing a flat cap and vest and with his shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Rodgers and Quinto had lagged behind Shay and I in our silver coin-powered rickshaw, but when they did arrive they’d gone to work on the neighbors to see what they could tell us about the second crime in one day at Gill’s. If looks were any indication, Rodgers had found a longshoreman with information worth sharing.

  “Hey, Daggers,” said Rodgers, stopping in front of me. “This is Yancey O’Brien. He’s the neighbor who called in the break-in.”

  “Ah.” So his attire was cultural, not work-related. “Thanks for the notice, pal. We appreciate it.”

  “No worries, mate,” the guy said in a rolling accent. “Gillsie was a decent bloke. It’s the least I could do.”

  I thought about Passion Faust and the fact that Gill had been murdered, most likely, over some piece of clandestine information and thought maybe the man hadn’t been as decent as everyone thought. “So, Yancey, you witnessed the break-in. Did you by any chance get a look at who did it?”

  “Blimey, but I did,” he said. “Won’t soon forget the lad, neither.”

  I wondered what he meant by that. “Great. We’re going to send a sketch artist by in a bit to work with you. He’s a, uh…” I considered making a disparaging remark about Boatreng, but I felt the heat of Shay’s eyes on the back of my neck and thought better of it. Besides, the guy wasn’t really that bad. “He’s a short guy, bald, with a goatee. But while we wait for him, why don’t you tell us about this unforgettable character you saw.”

  Yancey nodded. “Well, he was youthful chap, no older than his thirtieth, with wavy, shoulder length black hair like me nuncle’s. Seemed like he was in a hurry, which makes since ’cause he was knockin’ into Gill’s place. But the real kicker that caught my eye was the bloke’s nutty dressing gown.”

  I glanced at Yancey’s wharf rat outfit and held my tongue. “Wait…so you’re saying the guy was wearing a dress?”

  “No, mate,” said Yancey. “A dressing gown. As if he’d just taken a bath.”

  I wracked my brain. “You mean a robe?”

  “That’s what I said, ain’t it?” said Yancey. “Look, his gown was a deep violet, so dark it was almost black—but that’s not the half of it. The bloke’s gown was covered in astronomical symbols, moons and stars and whatnot, like he was some sort of storybook magician’s apprentice.”

  “Really?” I glanced at Rodgers. He shrugged. “That sounds like something out of a P. D. Wentwick swords and sorcery pulp.”

  Yancey shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  “Her,” I corrected. “The ‘P’ stands for Patricia, I think.”

  “You’re proving my point,” said Yancey.

  Shay sighed and joined me at my side. “Don’t worry, Mr. O’Brien. Detective Daggers’ fictional interests are pretty esoteric.”

  I smirked. Shay could joke all she wanted, but my passionate love of old mystery novels had helped solve one of our more recent, high-profile cases—at least, that’s how I remembered it.

  “Alright, I think that’s all we need, Yancey,” I said. “Are you on this floor?”

  The wannabe wharfie nodded. “Flat 204.”

  “Great. Thanks,” I said. “The sketch artist’ll be by soon.”

  As Yancey left, Quinto entered, leading a team of lab techs that spread out and got to work dusting and cataloging.

  “Did I miss anything?” asked Quinto.

  “Depends,” I said. “How good are you with dialects?”

  Quinto frowned and cast a glance at Rodgers.

  “It’s a joke,” said his partner. “But not a very good one.”

  “Hey, that’s unwarranted,” I said. “I’m doing the best I can with a limited arsenal. I don’t see you slinging around any one-liners, today.”

  Rodgers smiled. “I’m saving my ammunition for a worthwhile occasion. Like when we catch the killer.”

  “Let me know if you come up with anything good,” said Shay. “We could always collaborate to clobber Daggers with a one-two punch of zingers and withheld information.”

  I glanced at Steele. “I thought you didn’t enjoy that.”

  “I’m trying a new strategy. One with more snark.” She smiled. “So far it’s working better.”

  I grumped and expended my negative energies on the lab techs, expounding upon the virtues of hard work and explaining how the prints wouldn’t document themselves. They didn’t care for my hovering, so I rounded up my fellow detectives and headed back to the precinct.

  13

  I sat at my desk in the pit with the two reports from the lab techs clutched in my mitts, the ones from both morning and afternoon sessions at Gill’s place. Apparently, berating the technicians regarding their timeliness was an effective strategy. They’d delivered their second report to me less than an hour after returning to the office. Of course, judging by the glare the tech had shot me as he handed me the file and the crude frowny face blowing a raspberry that had been inked onto the bottom of the folder, I guessed I might’ve made another enemy in the precinct besides Boatreng.

  I scanned the results once again, to make sure I’d read them correctly. The prints collected from Gill’s place in the afternoon weren’t the same as those found in the morning. I’d anticipated the possibility, but I’d hoped the murderer would be the same person as the intruder. The case made more sense that way.

  Shay’s left hand held the top of my chair back as she leaned over me and read the reports I held in my hands. Her fingers pressed lightly into the space between my shoulder blades, and her gentle, warm breath wafted past me as she scanned her eyes across the pages. I filled my lungs with the scents of the office, scents of staleness and ink and warm coffee, but also Shay’s subtle perfume. It was definitely lilac. I was sure of it now.

  As she stood there reading, I wondered if she had any idea the effect she had on me—the way she sometimes ma
de my heart flutter with a heartfelt smile, the way my stomach sank when I made a quip that went a little too far or hit in a spot I hadn’t intended, the way she could simultaneously make me feel strained and at ease, something no doctor equipped with a stethoscope and one of those arm wrap thingies would ever believe possible.

  The way Shay stood behind me, relaxed and focused on the reports, made me think she had no clue how I felt—something that seemed at odds with her otherwise impeccable observational sense—but how could she know? I’d never explicitly told her how I felt about her. Instead, I’d gone to great lengths to bury the well of emotions she’d helped me uncover. I’d only recently come to grips with the feelings myself, and, moreover, admit I wanted those feelings of love and affection in my life again—along with everything that went with them. The painful feelings. The feelings of uncertainty and rejection and doubt.

  A miasma of those latter feelings swirled around me as my eyes burned holes in the technicians’ reports. Maybe I shouldn’t share my emotions with her. After all, what would Shay want with someone like me? A good ten years her senior, jaded, divorced, with a kid. Someone her age should be having fun and getting into trouble. Not that Shay was the type for that—she was far too focused on her career for that sort of nonsense, just as I’d been a decade ago when I was in her exact position…

  Her position? That thought gave me hope. In many respects, we were so similar. At Shay’s age, I’d also been looking for companionship, hoping to fit it into my busy schedule. Maybe she wouldn’t reject my feelings out of hand if I shared them.

  Of course, there was also the job angle. If Quinto and Cairny’s romance was a taboo subject, what chance did a detective partner pairing have of succeeding? None, I suspected. But then again…

  Shay clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, I can’t say any of that helps us much, but it’s good to confirm it.”

  I blinked away the fog. “Uh…you mean the fingerprint stuff?”

  “That, and Cairny’s report.”