3 Time to Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  “Cairny gave us her report?” I asked.

  “She wrote her notes at the bottom of that second page.” She flicked the reports with a fingertip. “Where it confirms Gill died between six and seven this morning? Honestly, Daggers, were you even reading these?”

  “I…uh…”

  Boatreng saved me from having to answer. He walked up to my desk, a couple of pages held in his small, stubby hands. How the man managed to wield a pencil with as much skill as he did with his sausage-like appendages, I’d never know.

  “Got your sketches,” he said. “Took longer than expected, mostly because I couldn’t understand half of what the witness from the break-in at Gill’s apartment was saying. Anyway, here’s the sketch of the lurker outside the 9’s club, and here’s the intruder at Gill’s place.”

  Boatreng handed me the two sketches. The first was of the guy the bouncer spotted. It showed the face of a guy maybe in his early forties, grizzled, with a four day beard and a faded scar trailing from underneath his left eye. A hood hid his hair, but it appeared to be close-cropped. The other sketch put some detail into the description we’d already received from Yancey the Deckhand. It featured a youthful face, clean-shaven, with a slim nose, thick eyebrows, and the aforementioned shoulder-length, wavy black hair.

  “Thanks, Boatreng,” I said. “These are perfect.”

  Our sketch artist nodded. “No problem.” He turned to walk away.

  A thought hit me. “Hey, just a sec.”

  Boatreng paused. “Yes?”

  “You know,” I said, “it occurs to me I’ve never asked if you prefer to go by Boatreng or Davis.”

  Boatreng shrugged. “Either’s fine. I don’t have the same aversion to given names you detectives do.”

  “Ok,” I said. “Just checking.”

  Boatreng retreated to the stairs, and I handed the sketches to Shay. As I did so she gave me a slight nod and smile, as if in approval of my civil interactions.

  “Well, we’ve got two sets of prints, and two different sketches,” said Shay as she regarded the drawings. “The question is, what do these people have in common, and what’s their connection to Gill?”

  “I’ve been wondering that as well,” I said, “but a more pressing concern is, now that we have these sketches, which one of us is going to grab the cork board?”

  “Well,” said Shay, “seeing as Rodgers and Quinto aren’t within shouting distance at the moment, you could go get it.”

  “Or, we could play a quick game of fire, water, magic wand.” I made my eyebrows dance.

  “Really?” Shay regarded me with disdain.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I haven’t played that since grade school,” she said.

  “I guess that’ll make it all the easier for me to beat you then. Come on, stick out your hands.”

  Shay sighed, but she complied.

  “On three,” I said. “One…two…”

  Fire, water, magic wand was mostly luck based, but it involved an element of psychology as well, and for that reason, I knew Shay would play along. Because of my personality, Shay would assume I’d choose fire, meaning she’d choose water. But she’d also know I’d suspect her of knowing that, which means I’d choose the magic wand to freeze her water, and she’d in turn choose fire to burn my wand. That meant if I wanted to win, I needed to choose water to douse her fire.

  “Three.”

  I held out a single finger for a magic wand. Shay steepled her fingers in imitation of a fire.

  Shay snorted. “You’re too easy, Daggers. Cork board’s in the closet. Remember to grab the new spool of yarn.”

  I suppressed a smile. “I’ll beat you next time.”

  I trudged over to the closet, retrieved our trusty cork-faced crime fighting companion, and wheeled her over to the side of our desks. Using pins I’d liberated from the face of the board, I tacked the sketches up and made their acquaintance to a couple strips of paper on which I wrote ‘Murder Suspect’ and ‘Trespasser.’ With that done, I plopped down in my chair. The bolts that held the thing together squeaked in response.

  Shay hadn’t retreated to the confines of her desk. Rather, she sat on the edge of mine. It gave her better access to the face of the board, and she liked being close to the action.

  “Alright, let’s go over what we know,” she said. “The victim, Darryl Gill, was tortured and murdered in his apartment early this morning—between six and seven, by Cairny’s estimations—most likely by our scar-faced suspect. As far as we can tell, he didn’t take anything of value from the apartment. Then at around three thirty, a separate individual—do you want to give him a nickname, Daggers?”

  I pursed my lips. “How about Bathed and Confused?”

  Shay furrowed her brows. “Huh?”

  “You know, because he was wearing a bath robe,” I said. “Oh, come on. That’s funny.”

  “It’s a bit involved,” said Shay with a frown. “Do you have anything else?”

  “Um…we could call him Sweet Cheeks, on account of his boyish face. Or just Cheeks for short.”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “I shouldn’t have asked. Ok, so at three thirty, Cheeks—”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What now?”

  “The other guy,” I said. “The suspect. He needs a nickname, too.”

  Shay rubbed a couple fingers against her brow. “Now I’m really regretting this. How about Scar Face?”

  “That’s a little tired, don’t you think?”

  “And you have better suggestions, I assume?” said Shay.

  “How about The Bearded Wonder? Or The Eleven O’Clock Shadow? Or we could get fancy and pick something like Grizzles McFacescruff.”

  “Scar Face it is,” said Shay.

  I snorted, and my partner continued. “So at three thirty, Cheeks breaks into Gill’s place. He sifts through his things, paying special attention to his personal effects and his past correspondence, which we’ve gathered here.” Shay pointed to our work spaces, upon which a few bags of evidence sat. The letters had been split between Rodgers and Quinto’s desks.

  “Now,” said Shay. “We know Gill owned a repossessions business, and he didn’t make many friends in that line of work. He also had expensive tastes in prostitutes—of the male persuasion, to be specific. However, Gill’s torture and the break-in at his place points to a search for information from our two perpetrators. Gill probably wasn’t murdered in a fit of passion, so I think we can rule out jilted ex-lovers and angry repossessed business owners as potential killers.”

  “But who does that leave?” I asked. “What information does someone like Gill, a reasonably successful small business owner but someone in no real position of authority, have that could be worth killing over?”

  Shay sucked on her lower lip. “Maybe it was an extortion case gone wrong. Maybe someone was blackmailing him over his sexual exploits, and he refused to pay. Or perhaps he owed someone a lot of money and couldn’t pay.”

  “But that doesn’t jive with his personal finances,” I said. “Unless his business was in serious debt, and… Wait. Come to think of it, we never did take a look at those records. We got sidetracked while talking to that gogre Gronk.”

  “Gogre?” Shay shot me a narrowed eye, raised brow sort of look.

  “Oh. Right.” I’d kept that part in my head. “Part goblin, part ogre. I assumed, based on his appearance…”

  “We could always go back to the repo warehouse,” said Shay.

  “We could.” My stomach grumbled. “On the other hand…”

  “Are you hungry again?”

  I glanced at the windows outside the Captain’s office. The sun painted the sky a fierce yellowy-orange, its fiery halo already hidden behind the city’s rooftops. “Well, it’s about that time. And besides, I’m a growing boy. Though most of the growing nowadays occurs in directions I’d rather it didn’t.”

  Shay took another glance at the sketches on the cork board, cracked her knuckles,
and snapped her fingers a few times. “Fair enough. I need time to mull over these clues, anyway. You want to grab some dinner?”

  The phrasing of the question was always similar. Do you want to grab some dinner, do you want to get some dinner, should we snag some dinner, or the occasional deviation: you hungry? We could try fill-in-the-blank’s. Never was the question posed in the most logical manner: do you want to go out to dinner? Because that might imply, in some infinitesimal way, that we were actually going out, or dating.

  I’d blame Shay for the awkward phrasing, but I did the exact same thing. Neither one of us wanted to step on the other’s emotional toes, I guess. But as I thought about it, I realized that of course Shay must know about my feelings for her, otherwise why would she avoid using those words? Right? But there was an alternate possibility. Did she avoid the go out terminology because she didn’t share the feelings I harbored for her, or because she feared I might not share the feelings she had for me?

  “Daggers?” she said.

  I blinked. “Food. Right. Where do you want to go?”

  14

  Shay surprised me. Instead of a fancy joint fit for pretentious epicureans, she picked a bar—and not just any bar, but a popular one, a place by the name of The Bleating Goat. The sign over the door pictured a portly goat trapped between two oversized buns, screaming its lungs out.

  When we ventured inside, a cacophony of conversation slapped me in the eardrums, dozens of voices from high-pitched pixies, booming ogres, and bass-voiced dwarves weaving together to form a wave of sound. As it broke over me, a more pleasant sensation arrived, too. Meaty, savory aromas filled my nostrils, those of seared beef and stewed pork and buttered bread, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. I detected rosemary and thyme and pepper and spice and the greatest aroma of all, the sudsy, rich, bitter smell of the most delectable of all beverages—beer.

  A hostess took our names and told us it would be a few minutes, so Shay and I found seats on a bench in front and got busy waiting. I must’ve looked like a total fool, because when I finally finished scanning the joint and sucking in its varied scents through the wide proboscis on the middle of my face, I noticed Shay peering at me, a cute smile stretched across her lips.

  “I thought you’d like this place,” she said.

  “So far, it’s in line to get tops marks on my report card,” I said. “The question is, what do you like about this place?”

  “It’s a gastropub,” Shay said matter-of-factly.

  “That sounds like a medical procedure I’d rather not get.”

  “A gastropub is a bar that serves high end food and beer,” said Shay.

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t have to sound so crestfallen,” she said. “They still serve bar food, it’s just much higher quality than your typical fare, which is all I’m after. As much as I enjoy the occasional fine dining experience, what I crave is food that’s cooked and served properly. Ingredients pieced together such that they fulfill their potential.”

  “And what exactly does this place specialize in?” I asked.

  “Burgers and fries, mostly. And beer.”

  I smiled. “I take back everything negative I’ve ever said about you. You’re the best partner ever.”

  “I’ll remember you said that.” Shay lifted her eyebrows. “You know, for future blackmailing purposes.”

  The hostess called our names and led us to a booth in the back situated next to a raucous party of dwarves who might’ve been over served—though it would be hard to tell with their ilk. Dwarves were notorious for both their rowdiness and their prodigious alcohol tolerance.

  The hostess handed me a one page menu with a bare ten items printed on the front, which was a nice change of pace from most of the places I visited with Shay. A full half of the menu items were different iterations of flame-grilled ground beef patties slapped between the two halves of a bun. All of them sounded delicious. Bacon and blue cheese, pickles and mustard, shaved red onions with a homemade sweet and savory glaze.

  Within a minute a waitress came by to take our drink orders—a mug of house lager for me and a cup of hot tea for Shay—but with the menu being so compact, we had our food choices picked out as well. We both ordered variations on the beefy house special, but I went with the traditional fried potato side while Shay opted for something called manioc. When pressed, she assured me it was another sort of fried tuber, so I let it slide.

  The waitress returned with our drinks. We clinked glasses and sipped them in mutually shared quiet contemplation, or as close as we could get to that with the boisterous, laughing dwarves at the table behind us. Their shouting made conversation nearly impossible, which actually worked in my favor. It gave me a chance to overanalyze everything that had happened between Shay and I over the past few hours.

  My partner had willingly brought me to a bar, one that served beer and everything. I know she’d given it a fancy name and made the excuse that the food was top notch, but that didn’t fundamentally change the sort of establishment it was. Was she buttering me up? Did she have a favor she needed to ask of me? Or was she genuinely taking my thoughts, wishes, and concerns into consideration when making her meal choices?

  As I sat in the booth, my mind, heart, and gut waged an internal war, and not over how much beer I should drink or how quickly I should consume it. Should I be honest with Shay? Tell her how I felt about her? If so, how much should I say, and how should I say it? No plan of attack I could come up with played out anything less than disastrously in my mind. No matter how I considered it, I saw heartbreak, awkwardness, and in the worst case, unemployment in my future.

  But what if I was subtle? Perhaps I could initiate the dinner invitation the next time and ask if she wanted to go out for a bite, breaking our unspoken code. If she accepted, surely that would indicate her interest, and if she declined…well, that must mean she knew what I was asking and not want any part of it. Right?

  Our food arrived as the dwarf party behind us shuffled away, giving our ears a bit of a breather. I wrapped my meaty hands around the burger and took a hearty bite. Rendered fat and mustard oozed over the sides of the patty and pickles crunched under the weight of my teeth. Steele took a more conservative approach, slicing her burger in half with a knife before taking a modest bite. I liked my no-holds-barred method better, but my methodology did have something to do with why I inevitably left restaurants with more stains on my clothes than when I’d entered.

  “So,” said Steele around a mouthful of meat and bun, “how’s your son doing?”

  The question caught me a little out of left field. “Tommy?”

  “No, your other son,” said Steele. “Of course, Tommy. Unless you have other children you’ve been keeping secret from me.”

  I swallowed my food. I wasn’t entirely sure how to answer, but the question gave me an opportunity to stop obsessing over me and Steele’s nonexistent romantic relationship and focus on reality. “He’s good. We’ve been spending more time together, especially at the park. Man that kids loves the monkey bars. You should see him. He’s like a…like a…”

  “Monkey?” offered Steele.

  “I was looking for a less obvious comparison, but yes.” I snorted and smiled. “He’s going to be bummed when the snows arrive.”

  “You can play on the monkey bars in the snow, you know,” said Steele.

  “Oh, I know,” I said, taking another bite. “And he’d love to. Tommy’s completely immune to the cold. But I’m not, and someone needs to watch over him.”

  Shay stuffed a few pieces of the fried manioc into her mouth after dipping them in a viscous, amber-colored sauce. The suckers really did look almost exactly like potatoes, though perhaps fluffier. I might have to try them at some point.

  “And how are things with Nicole?”

  Try as I might, I couldn’t help but wonder why Shay was asking me about my ex. I tried to answer truthfully. “Not bad, to be honest. I think we’re both finally past the awkward stage
where we think there might be a chance for us to work it out in the end.”

  “From everything you’ve told me, it sounds like Nicole was past that stage before she’d even signed the divorce papers.”

  “Possibly,” I said. “But I wasn’t. And…now I am. It’s nice, to be honest. Everything feels less strained. Less forced. We can finally spend time together with Tommy without it feeling like someone’s going to start yelling or crying at any moment.”

  “Sounds idyllic,” said Shay as she dipped another fry in her sauce.

  I snorted and took another large bite from my burger.

  “So what changed?”

  I raised an eyebrow as I chewed.

  Shay gestured toward me with a fry. “Something must’ve changed to initiate this new state in your relationship.”

  Steele was serving them up to me on a platter today. Could she really not know how I felt?

  I lied. “I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m maturing.”

  Shay laughed out loud, then stopped when she saw the look on my face. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize you were serious.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps that was an exaggeration,” I said. “Maybe it’s just time, then. They do say it heals all wounds.”

  “Hmm.” Shay’s eyes twinkled as she looked at me. “Perhaps.”

  Perhaps? What was that supposed to mean?

  Before I could suss out an explanation of that peculiar one word response, the waitress brought over our check. Shay insisted we split it.

  15

  The sun’s rays had barely cleared the top of the building across the street from the precinct when I set foot into the pit the following morning.

  My presence did not go unnoticed. Shay looked up from her desk as I approached.

  “Daggers?” She glanced out the windows. “Isn’t it a little early for you to be in? And by a little, I mean a lot.”

  I shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Was that herd of cats that lives outside your window back? I’m sure you could leave a bowl of milk or a fish out in the alley and they’d leave you alone.”