by Amir Lane
“I got him this when he moved in with me. He used to take out the floorboards to hide things. It's warded, you need the password to get into it. I don't know what it is, but he said to bring it to you if anything… Well, I suppose it's been long enough.”
I nodded, unsure of what else to say or do. He stood, clearly done sharing now that he'd delivered the box, and I did the same. We walked together in silence until we reached the hallway that branched to the back of the floor and the elevator. Superintendent Udalets shook my hand one last time.
“If you hear anything about him…”
“You will be the first person I call,” I promised.
I kept the box under my elbow while in the precinct, and with Kieron when I had to go out. He had strict orders to punch anyone who tried to take it from him. Nobody tried, but I was sure he would have done it of they had.
For the first time in too long, the day moved quickly around me. All I could think of was what could be inside that box.
Chapter Two
I practically had to beg Ariadne to go out with some friends from work tonight. She'd been nervous about leaving me alone in case I needed her. I told her if I was cleared to work in the field, I was cleared to spend an evening home alone. Nothing in this world made me happier than having her around after asking her to move in with me for so long, but I needed the time to myself to figure out how to open this box.
I hadn’t told her about Superintendent Udalets’ visit. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to know. Of course I was going to tell her. This was a big thing, and she was bound to hear about it from somebody. I just didn’t want her knowing about the box yet. Rowan was a secretive person, and I didn’t think he would want me sharing it.
More importantly, I didn’t need her worrying about me more than she already did.
There were four white squares under the seam where the lid met the rest of the box to form a built-in combination lock. I'd seen this sort of thing once before when I worked in Homicide. A killer had been keeping trophies in them. I wasn’t an expert in this sort of magic, but this box was much better quality than that one. There would be no getting into it without the password, unless I didn't mind electrocuting myself. I grabbed a pencil off the bedside table and tapped it against my teeth. So what would the combination be?
The first thing I tried was Rowan's birthday — March 31st, just after he disappeared. He was about to turn 34, two years older than me. The numbers flowed silver and disappeared, and the lid didn't open. Then I tried the date of his graduation from the police academy, the day he made detective, the day he'd started with Special Crimes. All of those had been in his police file, and none of which worked.
He wouldn’t use something so easily accessible.
I tried his father's birthday. That didn’t work, either. It might not have even been a date. It could have been any combination of four numbers. How would I know any random set of numbers? A date made the most sense.
“Come on, Rowan,” I muttered. “What was going on in your head? What is something I would know?”
Rowan wasn’t stupid. He thought everything through. It was the thing I hated and appreciated about him the most. Every case we had, he always thought two steps ahead. Working with him sometimes felt like the improvisation group Ariadne and I had gone to once early in our relationship; Yes, and? It drove me crazy.
I wrinkled my nose and tried the day of our first case together, only to have the numbers disappear again. What was something important enough that I would remember?
“The most important day of my life.”
The words came back from a not-so-distant memory. Even then, it had seemed odd that he would reveal something so personal when finding out that his dad lived in Alberta had seemed like such a big deal. It was the one and only time Rowan had talked to me about his life before the Toronto Police.
Oh, he was clever. He absolutely knew it was the sort of thing I would remember. There was no doubt in my mind that his exact wording had been deliberate, too.
The most important day of Rowan’s life was the day he became a Canadian citizen.
He’d told me the story while driving to follow our first real lead in the parahuman organ harvesting case we weren’t supposed to be investigating. Of course, the lead had been nothing but a diversion. It wasn’t until later that I’d realized the killer had gotten to Rowan first, and that he was the one responsible for the tip that led the RCMP to rescue Rowan as a teenager.
Had he known from then that something might happen to him? All those months… If he'd told me what was going on in his life, could I have saved him?
I shook my head to clear the thought. I couldn't change what had happened, I could only move forward. Rowan’s actions were not my responsibility.
I scribbled the numbers down in the boxes, 0122 for January 22nd. The graphite numbers glowed silver and faded again. Holding the pencil between my teeth, I worked my nails into the seam and lifted the lid—
— only for the rest of the box to come up with it.
“What? No!”
That was my last guess. Wasn't that what he'd said? Twenty-second January, most important day of his—
Oh.
Oh.
Stupid European date format. It wasn't 0122, it was 2201. I tried again and this time, when I lifted, the lid slid off with ease.
“Yes!”
I bounced on the bed a little, applauding my victory. January 22nd! If he hadn't dropped it in conversation, if I didn't know what it was like to become a citizen of a new country... In that moment, I thought he might have been the most calculated person I'd ever met. Underneath that grungy exterior was a tactical genius.
Now that the box was open, I hesitated. It felt horribly invasive going through this box. I was looking into a part of Rowan's life that he'd kept hidden from me for so long. But if he'd left it for me, wasn't that him giving me permission to snoop?
I didn’t have to try so hard to convince myself. Curiosity quickly got the better of me.
The box was full of newspaper clippings and photographs, and some medical and dental records. Rowan’s Certificate of Citizenship was wedged inside his passport, dated January 22nd.
There was a picture he'd taken of me, Kieron, Indira, and Sabine at last year's Christmas party. Indira’s flashing sweater left a bright spot on the photograph. Sabine was almost smiling.
Some of the newspaper clippings were about us, too. There were some about his old Sex Crimes unit, and some about Superintendent Udalets. Some were so old and faded, I couldn't read them. There were a few that didn’t appear to be English. Most of the pictures must have only dated back a few years, but there were some that were obviously much older.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, looking one of the faded Polaroids over.
I shouldn't have been looking at this. I really shouldn't have been looking at this.
There were four Polaroids. All of them had the same subject. If I hadn't known who this box belonged to, I might not have recognized who it was. Even knowing it, I could barely make out the resemblance.
Two showed his heel with the brand marking him as the heir to the Biarozy Birches. Large hands held him in place in three of them. Long, black hair fell over his bony shoulders and obstructed part of his face in all of them, but I could see his eyes. I knew those eyes. This was Rowan, underaged, underdressed, and clearly uncomfortable. Why in God’s name would he keep this? For proof? To remember? Who would want to remember this?
I shoved the photograph underneath the name change papers that legally identified him as Rowan Oak. I'd seen some of the worst murders in the city, and none of them made me feel as physically sick as this. Bile rose in the back of my throat. I barely managed to swallow it down.
You can do this. You have to do this.
I picked up a death certificate from the province of British Columbia with shaking hands. I had to blink a few times to process the that the name listed must have been Rowan’s birth name. It didn’
t match the name on the Certificate of Citizenship. The photograph attached with a paper clip showed the same malnourished body on a steel morgue tray with identical slits along the forearms. I thought of the trees tattooed on Rowan's arms, and set the certificate face-down beside me.
He must have faked his own death. That explained why nobody had come after him until now. Even before becoming Rowan Oak, he’d changed his name and taken on a new identity. Between the hormones and the plastic surgery, he looked almost nothing like the person in the polaroids. Aside from the brand on his foot, there was no reason for anybody to so much as suspect he was the Biarozy heir. If not for Rutherford Bromley, he might have been able to go the rest of his life without anybody finding out who he really was.
My name printed on a folded piece of paper caught my attention. I picked it out, shaking off the pictures of his cats. I was almost afraid to open it, but I wiped my eyes and did anyway. There was a single name written across the inside of the paper in his inelegant scrawl:
Audra Jansons.
Chapter Three
It took an unusual amount of digging to discover that Audra Jansons was an enforcer with the Black Birches gang. She'd been arrested for everything from distribution to solicitation since she was a teenager, leading up to the aggravated battery that had gotten her arrested just under four months ago. It was her first violent offence, committed just before Rowan had disappeared. It seemed a little off to me, how quickly she'd been processed and convicted. Something like this should have taken months, at least. If not for her name in Rowan's box, I might have forced myself to dismiss it as a rare efficiency of the system.
There was no obvious connection to Rowan, which made sense. He would have known I would comb through every piece of easily accessible information on him for any insight into where he might have gone or the Black Birches. He would have only left her name for me if it was important and not obvious. I set up an alert in the system to notify me if anything happened with her. It had only been a few days, but nothing had come up yet.
The corner of the second floor was quiet this morning. It usually was, since Sabine and I were almost always the only ones in before 7. But today, Kieron was already behind his desk next to mine, his eyes locked on his screen and his fingers pecking away at the keyboard. He grunted out a greeting to me around the bagel between his teeth. His button-down shirt was wrinkled, and I was tempted to fix his collar for him.
“Good morning,” I said, settling in my chair.
The springs creaked beneath the added weight. I booted up my computer and flipped through my notes from yesterday while it loaded. And loaded. And loaded.
From the corners of my eyes, I saw Kieron reach up to tug at a tie that wasn’t there. He sighed and rubbed his face.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
He gave me a sideways grin that said nothing was all right at all.
“Been a hell of a couple nights,” he said in an Irish accent that stretched out his vowels. “Gwen was up all night hacking up a lung, poor thing. Been making every damn thing I know how, but she doesn’t react well to milk thistle so my options are limited. I got in early to take her to the doctor later of she isn’t feeling better.”
“I hope she feels better soon.” I glanced over at my screen. “God, these computers are awful.”
“Tell me about it. Took me ten minutes for my goddamn emails to load up.”
It took mine even longer, long enough that I started reading them on my phone. The screen was too small to comfortably decipher the walls of text, but I hated just sitting around. It was bad enough Ariadne enforced a no-work-at-home policy. Unless somebody was on fire, there was no checking work emails after hours. If it was that important, they could call me. Anything else could wait.
I didn't like to wait. I wasn't a patient person by nature, but waiting in this context was the worst. It was an old feeling that lingered from my days working in Homicide. Who knew what could happen while I waited? Special Crimes cases tended to rank a little lower in priority for most people's interest, but they were just as time-sensitive.
I scrolled through a very long, very, very detailed email from a lab technician about a semen sample I'd had analyzed to find out if there were certain proteins present that would suggest an incubus had influenced his partner into having intercourse. Sexual assault cases were usually handled by Sex Crimes, or at least with Sex Crimes. Since the victim in this case was the incubus, and since he'd — uhm — finished, they'd shoved it off on me. I was fine handling it, I just wasn't fine with how little they cared about it.
It was for the best, though. Sex Crimes was overextended, and the lead detective who had originally been assigned to it was one of those guys. I was more than happy to take it off their hands. Cases like this had to be handled with a care Detective Obviously-he-wanted-it didn't have. The concubus community was already hypersensitive to these sorts of cases. Mishandling it would almost definitely have some major backlash. Regardless, the victim deserved the same thorough investigation as anyone else. Not that anybody really got that kind of thorough investigation, but I was doing my best with the resources at my disposal.
I would have been happier if I didn't lift my head to ask Rowan a question every time I hit a snag. Sex Crimes had been his home division, and he always worked these kinds of cases when we got them, just like I usually worked what he called ‘weird body’ cases.
I was in the middle of drafting a reply to the technician when Indira strode in. There was no other way to describe how he walked. There might have been a time where I would have said danced or flitted, but some of the spring was gone from his step. It didn't take a detective to see he missed Rowan, too.
As if she’d been watching for him, Sabine stepped out of her office and cleared her throat. It was the first time I'd seen her not on the phone or rushing to or from meetings in days, maybe weeks. I turned my chair around to look at her. My computer was still loading. The tight, pinched expression on her granite face was impossible to read, but it didn't look like she was about to yell at any of us. She lowered her wire-rimmed glasses to sit on the edge of her nose, and I immediately straightened from my slouched position. This was serious.
She didn't speak until Kieron turned in his own chair and Indira peered around the computer monitors to see her.
“I'm sure you noticed I have been acting Inspector for the past couple of months now,” she said, her voice a low, French-accented rumble. “They've officially given me the position. Kieron will be taking my place as Staff Sergeant. We will be making the change over the next few days.” She paused, and her face softened it as much as it could. “I've enjoyed being your Staff Sergeant. All of yours.”
Her eyes flickered briefly to the empty desk in front of me. I tried not to turn my head. Kieron and Indira didn't try as hard. She gave a curt nod and returned to her office. Our attention was now on Kieron, who was trying very much to make himself look like he wasn't over 6 feet tall and proportionately broad. The back of his neck was bright red. I didn't know why he was so embarrassed. He’d been a detective-sergeant for years. Staff sergeant was the obvious next step.
I smothered down the pang of jealousy as much as I could. Kieron was going to be great. He didn't need me accidentally casting the Evil Eye on him and screwing that up for him. My time would come. Today, I had other priorities.
“Come on! Give us a speech!” Indira cheered.
Kieron groaned, but I caught the edge of a smile on the corner of his lips.
“I'm only doing this until I can afford to buy a bakery. Don't set anything on fire until they find my replacement.”
I laughed, and Indira clapped with a dramatic sniff.
“That was beautiful,” he said. “Just beautiful. I wish I'd recorded it.”
Kieron crumpled up a piece of paper and hit Indira in the middle of the forehead with it. Indira's startled expression made me laugh harder. We all did. It was going to be hard without him in the field. We would need peopl
e to fill in the empty desks soon.
That hurt more than I wanted to think about.
“I have to go talk to a witness,” I said through my tight throat. I stood and put my hand on Kieron’s shoulder. “Congratulations.”
Some days, I wondered what would have happened if I'd gone to law school. The aching pit in my chest made this one of those days.
The change between Sabine and Kieron was much more seamless than I expected it to be. After only a few days, he was settled into her office, he distributing cases and arguing with other departments as if he’d been there for years. I hadn't realized how much of her job Kieron had already been doing. Though he kept up the gruff act, some of the stress around his eyes had faded. How self-absorbed was I not to notice how overworked he'd been?
The bullpen felt so empty now, with only mine and Indira's desks filled. Kieron's was still holding most of his files. They were mine and Indira’s files now. Even though he was just on the other side of the wall behind me, our forgotten corner felt so much less welcoming without the Pride flag he kept in his pencil holder. I imagined he'd taken it with him to Sabine’s office.
His office.
You can just get a flag, I reminded myself.
But there was something about Kieron, a massive ex-sniper, having one that had made me feel untouchable. It probably meant more to have an openly gay Staff Sergeant with that little flag sitting where every superior officer who talked to him in person would see it, but I selfishly missed it.
Thankfully, I didn’t have much time for wallowing. The suspect in my incubus assault case had changed her story so many times, it was almost impossible to keep track. There weren't major changes, just little details that had me running in circles to verify. I almost wondered if she was deliberately trying to waste my time or damage my credibility. At least no amount of run-around could change her cell phone records. Every text she'd sent since a week before the assault was sitting in a small binder in front of me. I was still working on getting any messaging app records she had, but this was more than enough to keep me busy. Almost going to law school had its advantages. My usual judge was on vacation, but a siren I had studied for the law school admission test with worked with a judge who'd had no problem signing a warrant for me.