Liquid Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 9)

by Alex P. Berg

  “It’s a great responsibility, being a father, isn’t it, Jake?” said Mr. Steele.

  Barney kept making love to my leg. I shook him off, trying to keep the rest of my body still as I poured the wine but probably looking like I was suffering from degeneration of my nervous system. “Ah. Yes. It…it is. Very.”

  “Well,” said Melody. “I hope you’re able to give him the attention he needs. At that age, children need a strong guiding hand. Without a father by his side, a boy—”

  Pain lanced through me as claws and teeth sunk into my shin. I swore and lashed out, kicking my leg.

  The table shook. Glasses tipped. Barnabus soared, mewling in panic before slamming into the wall with a thump. I tumbled and fell. Wine flew.

  A chorus of voiced cried out.

  “Good gods! Barney!”

  “The table!”

  “My gown!”

  I scrambled to my feet, searching for words. “I…uh…”

  Mrs. Steele glared at me, her white dress soaked through the bodice and sprayed with a hundred tiny droplets of red. Samuel and Shawn glared at me as more wine soaked through the tablecloth and dripped onto the floor. Mr. Steele glared at me, the pitiful whining form of Barnabus cradled in his arms.

  And there stood Shay, a look of horror frozen onto her face.

  I swallowed. Hard.

  2

  I turned the corner from Schumacher Avenue onto 5th, the morning breeze cool but the sun already warm on my back. The summer solstice was a few weeks away, but it seemed as if the season might arrive early this year.

  In front of me, the massive seal of justice hung over the precinct’s front doors, the carved granite depictions of soaring eagle wings and balanced scales glittering in the early morning sunlight.

  Well, maybe not early morning.

  I yanked on the front doors and let myself in, relishing in the cool air that greeted me. I reveled less in the stale smell, a mixture of burnt coffee, old wood, and cigarettes impudent beat cops had hastily puffed in the hallways when no one was looking. Still, it was a familiar smell, one that had soaked into my skin over the years and would soon claim the piece of cowhide I wore over my shoulders. I’d picked up a new one a few months ago, but eventually the tanning chemicals would fade, leaving Eau de Precinct in its wake.

  An unfamiliar face manned the welcome desk, one belonging to a dark elf breed who looked as if he’d spent the entire night there and then some. I gave him a halfhearted wave and wove my way around the edge of the tangled morass of cubicles and workstations we lovingly referred to as the pit. Luckily, my workspace was at the swamp’s edge.

  Shay’s desk butted up against my own, facing away from the precinct’s entrance. My partner sat there, wearing a bright yellow blazer and dark slacks, her chocolate brown hair held in a bun by a pair of crossed sticks. Her head was buried in a pile of papers.

  I sighed.

  Through I wasn’t close enough for Shay to pick up on my breathy expression of sorrow, someone else was. Quinto turned and shot me a glance. “Daggers. You made it.”

  The big guy filled his chair with his bulk, all three hundred odd pounds of it, and though in his current state he only measured about five feet, he’d be quite a bit taller if he stood. His thick skin was a pale gray in the morning light, a byproduct of his alleged trollish heritage, something which was well agreed upon but which to my knowledge Quinto had never admitted to.

  I understand why. Despite recent education efforts, New Welwic still suffered from its fair share of race relation problems, and trolls got a worse rap than most. All it took was a single lunatic who killed a half-dozen people and tried to eat them for the whole race to get negatively profiled for another decade.

  I gave the one man goon squad a nod. “You sound surprised, almost as if I hadn’t established a long history of coming into work late.”

  I thought I heard a sniff from the direction of Shay’s desk, but my partner didn’t turn.

  “Oh, I know,” said Quinto, flashing me a smile full of mismatched buckteeth. “And it’s not even that late. Not for you, anyway. It’s that you’d actually started arriving at a decent hour and kept it up for a couple months. I thought you’d turned a new leaf.”

  “I had.”

  “And?”

  “The leaf blew away.” I nodded at the desk opposite Quinto’s. “Where’s your perpetually cheery partner?”

  Quinto’s smile broadened. “Rodgers got randomly selected for compliance training. He’ll be stuck in meetings and seminars for three days.”

  “A plight you seem particularly empathetic to.”

  “Hey, I remember when you got selected a few years ago. The bitching took weeks to subside.”

  “Which means you’ll be subjected to the same when Rodgers returns, so I don’t know what you’re so happy about.”

  “You mistake my smile,” he said. “I’m glad I wasn’t the one selected. Besides, Rodgers isn’t the grouch you are. I’ll deal with the aftermath for a day, tops.”

  I nodded, tapping my fingers against the edge of his desk. “Gotcha.”

  Quinto turned back toward his reading materials.

  I lingered.

  He looked up. “Something wrong?”

  “Huh? No. Wooden leg syndrome. Better than wasps in the stomach.”

  Quinto’s brow furrowed, but I left before he could grill me over it. I crossed to my desk, pulled out my chair, and dropped into it.

  Shay held a pencil in her hand, her eyes darting between a case file and a form. After a few scribbles she looked up. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  She glanced at the window. “Quinto’s right. You’re late.”

  “It’s all relative. If you consider the last month, I’m here forty-five minutes late. If your frame of reference is a year ago, I’m an hour early.”

  Shay snorted and shook her head.

  “Hey, I didn’t sleep well, okay? It was hard enough forcing myself out of bed to get here at this hour.”

  “And you think you’re the only one who didn’t sleep well? Give me a break. As if I would’ve slept like a baby after last night.”

  “Hey, I don’t know. Maybe. There are a lot of things that don’t seem to bother you.”

  Shay narrowed an eye. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that it took an act of dramatic tragedy to get a rise out of you last night. Sure, when the wine goes flying and I get savaged by a feral cat, you show some emotion, but when I’m getting attacked by your parents and brother, it falls on deaf ears.”

  “Excuse me?” Shay’s cheeks darkened. “Daggers, you ruined my mother’s dress, not to mention the tablecloth. A half dozen glasses and dishes are broken! Who knows if Barnabus is going to pull through after you drop kicked him into the wall, and you’re concerned that I’m not standing up for you enough?”

  “Hey, guys?” Quinto had left his chair and sidled up next to us. “Is everything okay?”

  Perhaps we were being louder than I’d thought. “It’s fine.”

  “No, Daggers, everything is not fine,” said Shay. “My parent’s cat is on the verge of death thanks to you.”

  “What?” said Quinto.

  I snorted. “Now who’s prone to exaggeration?”

  Shay turned to Quinto. “While meeting my parents last night, Daggers punted the family cat into the wall, probably fracturing half his rib cage based on how he’s been acting since. He also spilled a bottle of wine onto my mother’s bosom, something he still hasn’t apologized for.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “I apologized profusely last night.”

  “For curb stomping Barney, sure.”

  “No. I apologized about the wine. I never apologized about the cat. That little hellion tore into my leg like a savage goblin, and at the worst possible time. He knew what he was up to. Speaking of which, I should probably get tested for rabies…”

  Shay turned to Quinto. “Are you hearing this?”
/>   The big guy gave me a glum look. “Look, Daggers. We all know about you and cats. Tore into your leg? Come on, man.”

  “You want to see the scars?” I said. “He came out of nowhere. I was totally blindsided. And lest Shay trick you into generating too much sympathy for her cat, let’s not gloss over how the more sentient members of her family treated me.”

  Shay looked exasperated. “Daggers, what are you talking about?”

  “I told you, everyone there was ganging up on me. Your dad held me at arm’s length, your brothers clearly thought I was nothing more than a human shield to protect you while at work, and your mother was far more interested in harassing me over my previous marriage than she was in getting to know me.”

  “That is so not true,” said Shay.

  “Guys,” said Quinto, holding up his hands. “It’s possible you’re both right, at least in your interpretations of the night’s events. Daggers, obviously you injured their cat, maybe not on purpose, but you have to admit your attitude toward those animals makes you far from a reliable witness on the matter. And Steele, even though you feel your family might’ve been welcoming to Daggers, you have to consider how he might’ve perceived the situation. After all, meeting a girl’s parents—”

  Shay shot him a withering glance.

  “—is, uh…well, it’s none of my business, is what it is. In fact, I think I’ll get back to work now that I mention it.”

  A new voice emerged, a hard, measured, feminine one. “Not so fast, Detective Quinto.”

  I turned toward the voice. Captain Beverley Knox stood outside her office, her arms crossed and her face set with a perpetually stern expression. She regarded us with cool grey eyes, eyes that somehow managed to combine all the best and worst elements of an irate father, a disappointed grandmother, and a teacher who believes you can do anything if you simply put your mind to it. She may have only stood tall enough to provide my elbows a convenient resting spot and weighed barely more than Quinto’s left leg, but the aura she projected was anything but small. I suspected her spirit animal was an elephant or a kraken or an aurochs on steroids.

  Quinto nodded. “Captain.”

  Steele and I nodded, too. We’d been louder than I’d thought, no doubt about it.

  Knox unfolded her arms and approached our desks. She surveyed Shay and me with a careful glance. “Everything under control here, detectives?”

  Shay and I answered at almost the same time. “Yes, Captain.”

  Knox swept those omniscient eyes of hers over us before responding. “Good. Because I have a suspicious death for the three of you that needs looking into.”

  Quinto lifted an eyebrow. “Is it related to the runner who dropped by first thing this morning? You know I’d have been happy to get the investigation started.”

  “You know the rules, Detective,” said Knox. “We work in pairs, at a minimum. As long as Detective Rodgers is busy in his compliance training, you’re in the company of Detectives Daggers and Steele, the former of which is finally here.”

  Captain Knox shot me another look. I’d bet she could deflate balloons with her eyes.

  “Sorry, Captain,” I said. “I’ll be on time tomorrow.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “But in this case, your tardiness may not make much of a difference. It doesn’t appear as if time is particularly of the essence in this case.”

  The venom had left Steele. She tilted her head in question. “What do you mean by that?”

  “A body washed ashore,” said Knox. “Down at the shipyards, at a place by the name of A&G Shipbuilding Limited. I don’t have all the details, but it sounds as if the corpse has been at sea for at least a week, maybe more.”

  I grimaced.

  Knox noticed. “Exactly. So take Coroner Moonshadow with you. I suspect you’ll need her expertise.”

  We all sat there for a moment until Knox gave us one of those nods with an implied, “What are you waiting for?” in it. Then we scattered like ants.

  3

  A&G Shipbuilding was on the east side of the city, across the bridge that spanned the Earl River and quite a ways from the precinct, so we took rickshaws. I’d thought Shay’s anger had faded upon the arrival of Captain Knox at our desks, but perhaps not, as she chose to ride with Quinto instead of me.

  That left me to ride with our coroner, Cairny Moonshadow, who happened to be Quinto’s girlfriend. I can’t imagine she or her beefy beau were particularly pleased about the arrangement. Then again, Cairny was Shay’s best friend, and they’d developed almost a psychic connection during my partner’s stint at the precinct—psychic in the mundane, we glance at each other and giggle and know exactly what the other is thinking sort of way. In any case, if anyone would understand Shay’s desire for privacy, it was probably her.

  Cairny’s long black hair fluttered in the cool breeze that whistled off the Wel Sea and up the Earl as we crossed the bridge, smacking me in the face with its wispy tendrils. She stared at the water as our driver slapped his feet against the pavement, paying me the same heed as she would the machinations of kings or the threat of the world suddenly imploding. I didn’t take it personally. She’d always been a daydreamer, seemingly finding death to be the most interesting part of life, which explained her career choice. Quinto had managed to bring her out of her shell, as had Shay, but her more vivacious personality quirks only came out when we all spent time together, along with Rodgers and occasionally his wife Allison.

  Come to think of it, despite all the years I’d spent alongside Cairny at work, I could count on one hand the number of times she and I had been alone together. Usually when I consulted with her it was alongside my partner, now Shay and before her Griggs, rest his soul. I didn’t start spending time with her outside of work until after Shay’s appearance. One of the many ways my partner had changed me, I guess.

  I cleared my throat as we clattered off the far end of the bridge and delved into the dock district. “So, Cairny. How’ve you been lately?”

  She turned and blinked at me with those huge, saucer-like eyes of hers, the only part of her that really screamed fairy. “How have I been?”

  “Yeah. You know. How’s life?”

  “It’s the state of living. The antithesis of death, but not of being undead. That’s an entirely different state altogether, one I’m still woefully uninformed about. What did you want to know about zombies?”

  “I didn’t ask about zombies.”

  “Oh. Right. So the opposite of zombies? Those are the living, aren’t they? Or were you referring to something else? Some construct maybe? What was the question, again?”

  I sighed, remembering why I didn’t spend a lot of alone time with Cairny. Luckily, we were nearing our destination.

  I pointed down the harbor, toward a collection of brightly-colored warehouses that stood along the shore like a set of toy blocks belonging to the world’s largest baby. “That’s Cornwall Heavy Industries, isn’t it? Remember when we found that man there? What was his name? Barrett, I think. I know that case was only five or six months ago, but it feels as if it’s been ages.”

  Cairny surprised me with her answer. “We’ve undergone quite a few changes since then, haven’t we? It was during that case that my relationship with Quinto started to blossom, and I believe the same could be said of your relationship with Steele. We lost the Captain to that case, among others. I’m sorry about Griggs, by the way. I’m not sure if I ever adequately expressed that to you.”

  I blinked. Cairny’s dispassionate personality made me suspect she didn’t possess the same capacity for compassion most people did. It was nice to see I was wrong. “Thanks.”

  Cairny kept me enthralled with her eyes. “Speaking of relationships, what’s the matter between you and Shay?”

  “A difference of opinion. Or perhaps a difference of perceived reality.”

  “I see.”

  Our rickshaw pulled up in front of A&G Shipbuilding, a much smaller shipyard than the aforementioned Cornwall Hea
vy Industries. A thick-necked bluecoat lounged at the entrance, an officer by the name of Poundstone who was good at lifting heavy objects, eating doughnuts, and little else. At his side stood a fisherman or dock worker of some sort, an assumption I made based on his thick beard, flannel shirt, and woolen cap.

  I reached into my wallet for some coins to pay the driver. Behind us, I heard the clatter of Shay and Quinto’s rickshaw as it arrived.

  “Daggers?” said Cairny.

  I looked up. “Yes?”

  “I know you, better than you think I do. Don’t be an idiot. With Steele, I mean.”

  “I’ll try.”

  We stepped down from the hand cart and approached Poundstone, almost simultaneously with Steele and Quinto. I gave the beat cop a nod. “Poundstone. Who’s your friend?”

  “Harris,” said the flannel-swathed one. “Danny Harris. I work here at A&G.”

  “You’re the one who found the body?” asked Quinto.

  “One of them anyway,” he said. “Me and my mates Frederick and Tolliver chanced across him first thing this morning.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” I said. “Show us the way.”

  Poundstone grunted and turned into the shipyard, tailed closely by his new best pal Harris. Following in their footsteps, we trekked through the maze of structures at the water’s edge, past flimsy metal buildings belching smoke from tall chimneys and past huge dry docks, some with the skeletons of boats within and some without, under tall cranes and past hulking piles of lumber, sheet metal, coiled rope, and steel pipes. Though the buildings at A&G weren’t quite the size of those further down the street, the steady progress of the industry was on full display, as even the smallest ships under construction would’ve dwarfed those of a decade ago.

  We reached a quay with a flimsy staircase that led down to a narrow beach. There in the sand, amid bits of discarded trash that had floated ashore on the tides, lay a still form.

  Sand crunched underfoot as I left the safety of the stairs. Waves lapped the shore about eight feet from the edge of the body, the water seeping through to keep the sand under the corpse damp but not saturated.