The Fairyland Murders

by J. A. Kazimer

  Her lips thinned as she opened the thick file in her hand. Slowly, she spread pictures and reports over the metal tabletop. Each image was worse than the previous; all murder victims, all with a good wingspan, with the exception of Barry.

  The victims’ eyes bulged wide from the dental floss around their throats. I looked away. In my line of work I’d seen my fair share of death, of murder, of the heartlessness of my fellow non-blue-haired brethren. But this . . .

  My fear for Izzy intensified. Did she have any idea what could happen if Jack the Tooth Ripper got his pliers on her?

  “Do you know who these people are, Mr. Reynolds?”

  I pointed to Barry’s photograph. “That’s the costume shop owner. The guy I found strung up.”

  She nodded. “That’s right. Recognize any of the others?”

  I didn’t want to look, I really didn’t, but I also didn’t want Locks to think I was weak. Not when she held my and Izzy’s next ten years in her hands. Breaking and entering wasn’t a charge taken lightly in New Never City.

  I straightened in the chair, studying every photo with enough intensity to appear interested but not enough to warrant murder charges. “If you’re asking whether I know any of these sprites, the answer is no.”

  Her eyebrow rose. “But you recognize some of them?”

  I pointed to a picture in the middle, a photo of a gray-bearded fairy with pink-tinted wings and a shock of red hair. “He looks sort of familiar.” I searched my brain but came up empty. If I did know him, I had no clue why.

  “I imagine he does.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Her head tilted to the side. “You don’t know?”

  “Let’s stop the answering-a-question-with-a-question tactic.” I smacked my handcuffs against the metal table, which rattled for a few seconds before quieting. “If you have something to say, say it; otherwise, I’d like to call my attorney.” Not that I had one, or could even afford one. But I’d watched enough TV to know they were the next words used in the bad guy’s dialogue.

  “Fair enough.” She tapped the picture of the gray-bearded fairy. “This man was the first victim of the killer known as Jack the Tooth Ripper.”

  “So?”

  “His name was Arnold.” Her gaze held mine. “Arnold Davis.”

  Shit. Izzy’s father had been the first victim. That had to be more than just a coincidence. Which meant that until I figured out how the attempt on Izzy’s life and her father’s murder were connected, I’d better watch my back. Izzy’s too. That didn’t sound like a bad proposition at all.

  My thoughts must’ve shown on my face because Locks straightened in her chair. “Yes, Arnold Davis was none other than your girlfriend’s dear old daddy. He was killed one year ago.” She paused. “Almost to the day.”

  “What’s your point?” I didn’t like her tone, not one bit. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like her answer that much either. Sure enough, I was right.

  She pointed to the photo next to Arnold Davis’s. It was of an orange-winged fairy with a mustache and hipster glasses. I winced. It was hard to look hip with bug eyes and a floss necktie. “This was victim number two, Jeremiah Dust, the Tooth Fairy the Council appointed after Davis’s murder.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  She gestured to the third picture. “Then came Stephanie Wilson; she was appointed two days after Dust’s death and subsequently died three days later.”

  I didn’t want to hear anymore. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

  “Not you, Mr. Reynolds.” She ran a hand through her short bobbed hair. “Your girlfriend.”

  I let out a chuckle. “Are you suggesting Izzy is somehow involved with Jack the Tooth Ripper?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” I said, relaxing a little for the first time since Locks entered the interrogation room.

  But the detective wasn’t finished. “What I’m saying, Mr. Reynolds, is what makes you so certain the Tooth Ripper is a Jack and not, say, a Jackie?”

  I barked with laughter. “You’re kidding, right? How could Izzy kill nine victims without anyone the wiser?”

  Her eyebrow rose. “Nine victims?”

  Oops. “Sorry, math’s never been my strong suit.” I smiled with completely affected sincerity. “Izzy has no reason to kill anyone—” or almost no one—“let alone her own father and a string of seven other Tooth Fairies. And Barry.”

  “Is that so?”

  I nodded, feeling less confident than I had thirty seconds before.

  “Did you know that the Fairy Council has repeatedly denied Ms. Davis her title as Tooth Fairy?”

  “That’s not true.” I brought my chained hands up in protest. “Izzy doesn’t want to be the Tooth Fairy. She’s the one who told them no.” Until today. Damn her and her destiny talk. Being the Tooth Fairy would only end up getting her killed.

  “Nuh-uh.” Locks paused, as if gathering her thoughts. “That’s not what the Council told us when we went to visit with them a few days ago. They claim Ms. Davis longs to follow in her father’s footsteps. That she would do anything to be the Tooth Fairy.”

  I snorted. “They lied.” Not much of a shock there. Lies were like fairy dust to those guys.

  She rose to her feet and walked around the table to stand behind me. “So says you. But what if they aren’t lying? What if the Fairy Council appointed one fairy after another as the Tooth Fairy, never giving Ms. Davis what she wanted most? How far would she go to get what she wanted?”

  Turning in my chair, my gaze followed the detective as she crossed the room, returning to her seat. With each step my agitation increased until sparks crackled from my fingertips, bouncing off the tabletop and falling harmlessly to the worn tile floor.

  The detective raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment on the blue flashes. “The only way she could be the Tooth Fairy was to kill every fairy appointed by the Council until, left with no options, they finally elected her.”

  “No way,” I said, but my tone conveyed a dribble of doubt. Doubt that I quickly crushed under one fact. “Izzy isn’t a killer.” Not that she couldn’t rip your face off if given the right incentive. But outright murder wasn’t her style.

  Detective Locks ran her tongue over her bottom lip, as if considering my statement. But I knew better. She had something else up her sleeve. “Maybe,” she said, “Ms. Davis had help.”

  “Is that why I’m here?” I tried to control the anger swirling inside me. “You think I helped Izzy kill her father and the rest of those fairies?”

  She smiled softly, like we were the best of friends. I had to smile. Her good cop was nearly as bad as my solid citizen. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.” Yet.

  She smiled, turning her from pretty to beautiful in a flash, and then it was gone. “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  She sat back down in her chair, picking up another folder. “There is another matter we need to discuss.”

  I sighed. “I had nothing to do with breaking into that kid’s room. I told the first cop that.”

  Her eyebrow rose. “We know that.”

  “Then what is this other matter?”

  “A fire.” She clicked her pen a few times, watching me intently. “At Penelopee Andersen’s loft a few days ago. Did you start it?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Answer the question, Mr. Reynolds.” She leaned forward, all humor and good cop gone in a flash. “Did you start that fire?”

  My body hummed, but I swallowed the current back. Burning down the cop shop in order to prove I didn’t burn down Penelopee’s apartment didn’t feel like the right move. I shoved away from the table as far as my handcuffed wrists would allow. “I would like a lawyer now.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Twenty minutes later I stood next to Detective Locks, staring through a two-way mirror at Izzy on the other side. She looked even more beautiful in the fluorescent lig
hting, which probably had something to do with the rage in her gaze. Izzy sat rigid in the metal interrogation-room chair, her expression burning with violence. I grinned. For the first time her anger wasn’t directed at me, a fact that made me very happy.

  Detective Locks’s partner, Peter Rabit, sat with his back to the two-way glass. He rubbed a hand through his hair. “Ms. Davis, thank you for agreeing to talk to us.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “We had a chat with Mr. Reynolds.”

  “How nice for you.”

  Rabit dipped his head. “Reynolds had some interesting things to say.”

  She let out a small chuckle. “I bet he did.”

  “Indeed.” Rabit leaned forward, his face a few inches from hers. “What I found most interesting about Mr. Reynolds’s statement was his knowledge of the fairy serial murderer.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “What?”

  “Yes.” He folded his hands. “It seems Mr. Reynolds is convinced he knows exactly who is killing your fairy brethren and why.”

  “No way.”

  “Mr. Reynolds was adamant.”

  “You mean he’s an idiot? Yeah. That I believe.”

  I laughed, but my humor soon vanished when Izzy leaned forward, the swells of her breasts bubbling from her tank top. Rabit noticed too, if his indrawn breath and the bit of drool slipping from his lips were any indication.

  He cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, Mr. Reynolds does make a point.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The killer must be a fairy. One with a motive to want any and all other elected Tooth Fairies out of her way.”

  “Her way?” Izzy’s resulting laugh nearly busted my eardrum. Rabit covered his ears as well until she stopped laughing. “You’re kidding me, right?” she asked.

  “No.” He laid down the photographs Locks had shown me earlier. Izzy looked away, her gaze locking on the two-way mirror where I stood, as if she could see right through it and into my soul. I tried not to flinch. “Look at the facts, Ms. Davis,” Rabit said. “We have the brutal hangings of eight victims.”

  Thankfully, no one had found poor Henrick just yet.

  Izzy shook her head. “Better count again.”

  Damn it. She was about to confess to my dumping Henrick in the harbor, making us both look even guiltier. I smacked the glass, warning her to keep her mouth shut. Izzy glanced up at the mirror and winked.

  Before I could hit the glass again, Detective Locks grabbed my arm, receiving a small shock, but she still managed to pull me from the glass. “Do that again and I will have you up on arson, murder, and attempted escape charges before you can spell your name,” she warned.

  I held my hands up in surrender.

  Behind the glass, Izzy was explaining her earlier comment about the number of actual victims. “My father, Arnold Davis,” she tapped his photo, “didn’t die from hanging. He was beaten, receiving at least three major blows to the right side of his body right before he died.”

  “Go on,” Rabit said when she stopped.

  She closed her eyes. “Then the killer tied a rope of dental floss around his neck, trying to make his death appear like a suicide. But the killer failed.”

  Rabit turned toward the mirror, his face registering his shock. Detective Locks whistled softly. “That was privileged information,” she said.

  “So?” I asked.

  “We never released that information to anyone.... The only person who knows the truth . . .”

  I closed my eyes. “Is the killer.”

  CHAPTER 45

  “Izzy, what the hell?” I yelled through the metal bars separating us. We’d been locked inside the New Never City Jail for a little over twenty-four hours, more than enough time for my temper to reach electrostatic. “The cops think you’re a serial killer and I’m helping you. Why did you have to bring all that stuff about your father up?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “What was I supposed to say?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I threaded my hands through the bars. They grew warm under my grip. “How about something like ‘I didn’t kill anyone’? That might’ve helped.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t kill anyone. There. Does that make you happy? Besides, why would I kill my father? I loved him.” She paused. “You and my dad are . . . were a lot alike. He did what was right, even when the odds and everyone else was against him.”

  Is that how Izzy saw me, as some kind of hero? Years of inhaling fairy dust must’ve done a hell of a number on her head. I shook my head but didn’t interrupt her story.

  “My father was the longest-reigning Tooth Fairy in our history. He took over for my grandfather when he was just twelve years old. It wasn’t always easy. There were times when he wanted to quit it all. Times when he lost everything, including the only woman he ever loved, because of his job.”

  I understood that feeling. Too bad my belly didn’t. It demanded food and shelter, with the occasional bottle of whiskey for good measure.

  She seemed lost in her memories of what I assumed were happier times. I thought of the picture of Izzy I’d seen at Fairy Central. The one with her and an unknown man, a man I now knew was Arnold Davis. The two of them had looked happy. My throat tightened as longing for my own family washed over me. I shook it off as I had for most of my life.

  Izzy was saying, “I’ll give you an example of the kind of man my dad was. A long time ago, when I was little, my dad was on the job. A little girl uptown had lost her two front teeth. He was in and out in a flash. No problem.”

  I suspected that wasn’t quite true by the hardening of Izzy’s face as she recounted the next part of her tale. “The next morning a lawyer called the Fairy Council,” she said. “He claimed my dad hadn’t lived up to his end of the implied tooth contract.”

  “Tooth contract?”

  She laughed. “I know, right? You see, this little girl wanted a pony in exchange for her teeth, and when she found only a dollar under her pillow, all hell broke loose.”

  “Nice kid.”

  Izzy shrugged. “The Fairy Council didn’t know what to do. They were in a panic. A lawsuit would bankrupt them, not to mention every kid in the city would start selling their teeth for bigger and better things, leaving the fairies without a dentin source.”

  I grinned, thinking of the fifty-cent candy bar I’d bought with my very first Tooth Fairy cash. I’d enjoyed every chewy bite, until, unbeknownst to me, my second loose tooth had stuck itself in the caramel mass that I cluelessly swallowed, losing out on a second windfall.

  “The Council wanted to quietly settle with the girl and her lawyer, but my dad refused, said he wouldn’t negotiate with tooth terrorists. So he did what he had to do,” she said. “No one ever heard from the girl or her lawyer again. And no kid has questioned us since.”

  “Sounds like a hell of a dad.” I’d often dreamed of a father like that, a man who would teach me what it meant to be a man, especially a blue-haired, electrically charged one. But it wasn’t to be. My parents had abandoned me on the steps of the orphanage, probably terrified at the abomination they’d unleashed on the world.

  “He was.” Memories softened her features again and her face took on a faraway, happy look. As suddenly as her emotions swelled, they vanished, and she shook her head. “It took me a long time—too long, in fact—to realize what a great man he really was. A year ago he was murdered. Two days after he died I received a package in the mail. A present for my twenty-fifth birthday. The heart-shaped locket I wear around my neck. I never take it off.”

  My gaze lowered to her neck, and the empty space where the necklace once sat. The cops had taken it when they booked us. “I’m sorry, Izzy,” I said, at a loss for words. I wanted to take her pain away, but I couldn’t, not this time.

  Tears filled her eyes. “Because of some stupid argument we’d had about my boyfriend, I never got to say good-bye. To tell him what he meant to me.”

  I nodded. “So you found out all you could about
his death? That’s how you knew what the cops kept from the press.” I would’ve done the same.

  “I had to know the truth. It became an obsession. For the last year I’ve done whatever I can to find the motive for his murder. And his killer.”

  “You want revenge.”

  “Yes.” She paused. “But I want something else even more.”

  “What?”

  “To clear his name.”

  My forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”

  She tucked her head in her hands as if ashamed of what she was about to tell me. “Before he died . . . he took something . . . something very important to the fairies.”

  “What was it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. The Fairy Council refuses to say. But I know my father would never do anything to cause harm to his people.”

  But what about his daughter? What had Arnold done to protect her? I had a feeling it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Not with a killer stalking her every step.

  CHAPTER 46

  Two hours later I made bail. I wasn’t quite sure how, since I had no money and even fewer friends, but Detective Locks unlocked my jail cell and motioned me forward. “Mr. Reynolds, you are free to go.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, slowly rising from the creaky metal cot, a cot that smelled like urine and fairy dust.

  “You made bail,” she said.

  “I did?” I frowned. “How?”

  “I have no idea.” She shrugged. “If the how concerns you so much, I’m sure we can make arrangements for you to stay. . . .”

  “No, no.” I rushed forward, stopping just outside the cell door. “What about Izzy?”

  The Tooth Fairy in question stood at her own cell door, her hands wrapped around the steel bars. She looked tired, as if the last twenty-four hours had taken a large toll. Was she in need of another dentin fix? I prayed that wasn’t the case since I’d fried the only dealer willing to sell molars to a blue-haired guy.

  “Ms. Davis will remain as our guest,” Locks said.

  The news didn’t bother me all that much. Izzy was safer locked inside the New Never City Jail than she was out on the streets, pilfering teeth for the corrupt Council. Plus her incarceration would give me a chance, for the first time since we’d met, to go on the investigational offensive without worrying about her tagging along.