by Dan Stout
Talena stood with one hand on the door, the other tucked in the pocket of her jeans. She wore a zip-up sweater over the top of an open flannel shirt, untucked, with a plain green T-shirt as a base. Easily removed layers perfect for moving around the city’s microclimates.
“Twice in three days,” she said. “A new record.” She may have attempted a smile. If so, it didn’t make it to her face. “Why are you here?”
She sounded tired.
“Your friend Stacie. She’s dead.”
I expected her to stiffen, to turn away. Instead she nodded.
“I know,” she said.
“They think it’s a—”
“Her pimp’s dead, too.” She rubbed her eyes. “Butterfly Carrington. She was a proper bitch, but no one should go out that way.”
She already knew. I paused, uncertain how to proceed. My major conversational gambit involves annoying people into revealing more than they intended. It was a skill set that left me sorely unprepared for talks like this.
I stood there sweating and unsure, trying to ignore the pain in my legs and the discomfort in my gut as she decided what to do with me.
After three long breaths she stepped aside. “Well, come on in, then.”
I followed her inside, trying to remember the last time I’d seen her apartment. Three years? Four? I hadn’t helped move her stuff when she left her grandparents’ place. That was after Jenny went into the hospital for the last time. After I couldn’t afford the rent on our apartment. After I fell off the wagon.
“I’m getting ready to head out,” she said. “Can you make it fast, whatever it is?”
Talena’s apartment was more workspace than home. The furniture was bohemian-chic, fabrics and oversized pillows stashed around low-slung thrift store tables. Every wall was decorated with paper hangings and every available surface was stacked with pamphlets like the one I’d taken from her the other day and that still sat crumpled in my suit coat pocket. Scattered around were a few personal mementos, including photos of Talena and her mother. I wasn’t in any of them.
I turned, not letting myself dwell on the many reasons I’d given her to want me out of her life. Instead I focused on the wall decorations. They weren’t photos or posters. I stepped closer. Each one was a thank-you letter.
Dozens of letters, all from people thanking Talena for helping them get off the streets or change their lives. Some were from families of people who she’d tried to help but failed. Hung in groupings of eight, many of the letters had an infinity sign beneath the signature, a nod to Talena’s faith.
I looked from the letters to Talena. There was a glint of metal at her collarbone. A stylized eight hung on a simple chain around her neck. The number eight was sacred. Turned on its side, an eight became a ba, the symbol of the infinite One Path, which was walked by eight Families—the eight intelligent species that populated the world. Eight constellations made up the horoscope, and eight continents had once been scattered over the globe before joining together to form Eyjan.
“Well?” she said.
It occurred to me that I didn’t know when she’d picked up religion. We’d never prayed much when she was a kid. The occasional thanks to the Titan, but that’s tradition, a holdover from old ways that predated the Path. Her faith didn’t bother me; I respected her convictions. I was just never that good at saying it out loud.
But introspection is tough to keep up when you’re in pain, and my legs were killing me. I fished my aluminum packet out and pulled two pills free. It didn’t matter if Talena saw them or not—she wouldn’t be reporting to the department shrinks.
“Look, can I get a glass of water?” I loosened my already slack tie.
She hesitated, staring at the tiny, tightly wrapped packet between my fingers. I realized that it didn’t look too far from the illicit packages she saw change hands every day on the street.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “They’re prescription. From Al Mumphrey.”
She raised a brow. Skeptical. “Your poker buddy?”
“He’s a doctor,” I said. “Got a diploma on his wall and never lost a patient.”
“He’s the medical examiner. His patients are all corpses.”
“Except for me,” I said. “And I’m not dead yet.”
She almost smiled. “If you say so.”
I shifted my weight from one aching leg to the other. “How about that water?”
Talena stepped to the kitchenette and ran the tap. As she did, a strand of hair fell across her face and the light caught her profile just right; I was shocked that I could have forgotten how much she looked like her mother. In that moment I steeled my resolve.
My mom had died on the job when I was a kid. I never got to say good-bye, but I also didn’t have to watch her go. Talena had been a young adult when she watched Jenny wither on the vine as cancer ate her bones. I didn’t want either of us to see the other caught up in the madness that was growing around the Haberdine case. I may not have been a good father figure for most of Talena’s life, but I could at least help her stay clear of the coming storm.
Even if she wouldn’t want the help.
I shot the pills and chased them with a swig from the tapered cup Talena handed me.
“You need to leave town,” I said, and she answered by rolling her eyes.
“I told you the Squib murder was bad.” I handed her the empty cup. “It’s getting worse. Now there’s talk in the Bunker about blackmail being involved.” I did my best to appeal to her sense of reason. “You oughta disappear. At least until things blow over.”
She smirked. “I don’t run away. That was always more your thing.”
I opened my mouth, meaning to tell her I was proud of her, meaning to say I didn’t know how I’d ended up being just as absent as my own old man had been. But that’s not what came out.
Instead, I heard myself using her recently murdered friend to prove my point.
“You saw what happened to Stacie.”
Her lips pulled back, and her hands laced around the empty cup, fidgeting with excess energy. Her temper was rising.
“I did.” She dropped the cup in the sink with a rattle. “And if we turn our backs it’ll keep happening to women every day, in every neighborhood in this town.”
She grabbed a stack of papers off a table and rapped the edges, knocking them into tidy order before moving on to another stack. It was a quirk she’d picked up from her mom. The house was never more organized than when Jenny and I fought.
“Talena—”
“You want to run?” She ran her hand across her bookshelf, bringing the spines to order. “Fine.”
She turned and struck her chest. “Not me. I’m the person who runs toward the sound of sirens, to see if I can help.”
“The world needs people like that,” I said. “Trouble is, sometimes the real works gets done in the dark, where there’s no flashing lights and sirens to draw attention.”
Talena’s face flushed and she grimaced, as if biting back her response. Turning away, she gathered an armful of pamphlets. She was getting ready to hit the streets and save more souls. That’s when I saw my mistake.
I’d come to warn her off, and I’d only managed to rile her up. If I laid out the full scope of risk she was facing, Talena wouldn’t retreat to fight another day. She’d charge in and sort out the details later, probably while sitting in the hospital or a jail cell. Or both.
And who did that remind me of?
If she wasn’t going to take my advice, then the only way I could see to get both of us in the clear was to wrap the case up quickly. And that meant moving on Flanagan.
“Alright, I warned you. Mission accomplished.” I backpedaled, then changed the subject. “Have you heard anything about Stacie? Any idea who would’ve wanted her dead?”
She exhaled and shook her head. “Nothing you
’d credit. People are saying that it’s the Squib Stalker.”
“The what?”
“Read a paper.” She threw one of the local fish wraps at me. I caught it and popped it open. The headline screamed “IS NO ONE SAFE?” above an utterly indecent photo of Stacie’s corpse and another photo of her as a young bombshell. The story was several columns of speculation about a killer driven by Squib rage to slaughter everyone in his path.
“Bunch of crap,” I said. “It’s nothing like the Haberdine killing.” A few questions at the Bunker had confirmed that already. Stacie and her pimp had each been shot and tossed off the roof of a building on the outskirts of town. Brutal, but not out of line for a Titanshade homicide.
“That’s not the word on the street,” she said. “People are scared. They think any human who looks strange has got Squib rage.” She walked to the door and opened it. “Okay, so you delivered your message. Thanks, I guess. Now I’ve got work to do.”
She moved out of the apartment and I followed, waiting as she latched the eight deadbolts on her door. We walked down the stairs together in an uncomfortable silence. My mind chewed on the puzzle of what to say. I was afraid that if I said too little she’d be at risk, and if I told her too much she’d do something stupid. I thought about it all the way down the stairs. I thought about it as we walked through the doors. And then we were on the street and I saw the press of people, the hundreds of lives passing by, and I wondered how many of them might be touched by what she was doing. And I realized that maybe instead of puzzling out what to say, I should just say something.
“Hey,” I said. She was already walking away from me. “Do some good out there today.”
Talena barked out a laugh, and called over her shoulder, “Since when do you care about what happens to kids on the street?”
“I always have,” I said. But she was too far from me to hear.
I said it again, this time to myself.
“I always have.”
In my mind a single, obsessive drum pounded. You gotta get Flanagan. The only way to save her is to find Flanagan.
* * *
By the time I got back to the Bunker, Ajax had heard back from Gellica’s assistant. Our meeting was scheduled. We rode out that afternoon and were ushered to a small balcony overlooking the courtyard in the center of 1 Government Plaza. Below, vendors hawked street food and federal employees milled about, enjoying the green space. This failure to squeeze in an extra parking lot or office space was mind-boggling in a city where every available inch of real estate teemed with families and would-be oil boomers. The tiny park was a declaration of power and wealth, eloquent in its simplicity. And it all seemed below the attention of our host, as Gellica sipped iced tea through a straw and looked at Ajax and me expectantly.
“Well? What have you found?” she asked.
I looked away from the litter-free courtyard long enough to give her a non-answer.
“I’m sure you understand that we can’t comment directly on an ongoing investigation.”
She waved me off. “Fine. I’m not looking for state secrets. But I do want to know if you’re making progress, and if there’s anything else our department can do to help.”
We’d released both Lowell and Cordray, though I had a plan on the back burner to make sure neither one of them walked away from this mess unscathed.
“The information you already provided was very helpful,” I said.
“Hmm. I sense this is a lead-in to a request, Detective.”
“Your senses are refined, Envoy.”
She smiled around her straw. “Well, ask away.”
“How much do you track your employees’ activities?”
“We have security measures. We deal with sensitive information on a regular basis and can’t allow any kind of security breach. But we’re not in the habit of spying on our own people, if that’s what you’re asking.”
In the courtyard diplomats and administrators were enjoying the weather. Separated from the rest of the city, there were no hustlers selling knockoff watches, no games of three-card monte running on top of overturned cardboard boxes. But I wasn’t fooled by the beauty of the emerald square. I knew they had their own brand of con men in these neighborhoods. Up here, it was the nonviolent offenders who were the most dangerous.
I pulled out the photos of Flanagan and all the candies we’d shown her subordinates. “Have you ever seen any of these people?”
She leaned forward, close enough that I could see tiny flecks of gold in the brown of her eyes as she pushed the photos back and forth. Finally she tapped a finger on the photo of Flanagan.
“I know him,” she said.
“You’ve seen him? With the Squibs?”
She bit her lip. “No . . . from the news. There was a scandal. Not recently.”
“Back a few years,” I said. “He hurt a lot of people.”
“I read about it. One of the tabloids in the capital ran a piece on the level of corruption in the North. Titanshade is still viewed as the wild frontier down in Fracinica.”
The capital city viewed pretty much everything outside its borders as second-class rabble. It was only our oil reserves and the tremendous amount of money they provided the AFS coffers that caused us to register with the central government at all. If the wells dried up before the wind farm deal closed we wouldn’t even have that.
“You think this Flanagan was involved in some way?” she asked.
“I do.”
Jax interjected. “What about her?” He pointed to the photo of Stacie. “Have you ever seen her?”
Gellica looked again, narrowing her eyes.
“Not that I remember, but I have a feeling that you’re about to tell me I have.”
My partner let out a short, tinkling laugh. “A wise old man once told me to never ask a question unless I already knew the answer.” He nudged the photo closer. “Think again, have you seen her with Lowell at any time?”
She studied it, then shook her head. “I honestly couldn’t say. Is she connected in some way?”
“She’s dead,” I said. Gellica’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped.
“And you think Lowell—”
“The investigation is ongoing,” Jax said. “The detectives handling that case will be in touch if it’s needed. But only if it’s needed.” He paused, giving Gellica a chance to volunteer more information. She stirred her drink and said nothing.
“Right now, we want to focus our efforts,” I said. “We’d like to show this photo”—I indicated Flanagan—“to more of your employees. Anyone who was around the Squib delegation or anyone else involved with the talks. If they remember him or who he talked to, it might help us sew things up.”
Gellica took another sip of tea and furrowed her brows. “Of course. But . . .”
“What is it?” asked Jax.
“Well,” she said, “I want you to wrap this up as fast as possible.”
“We all do,” I said.
“And I’d be even happier if you found out that it was this Flanagan person, and had nothing to do with any of our people or their proclivities.”
Jax piped in. “So you can leave them in place?”
“Oh, Lowell and Cordray will be fired. But only after you’re done with them. Every organization has to deal with some assholes, but there’s no point in rewarding this kind of behavior.”
“But?”
“But,” she said “it seems to me like everything is pointing to a connection with the candies. Haberdine taking a room in a second hotel, away from his peers. Then this girl—”
“Stacie,” I said.
“Who you say was connected to Lowell.” She paused and shuddered briefly.
I shook my head, intending to change the subject, but Ajax leaned in, interested.
“Say more,” he said, wiping clean a tu
sk with his napkin.
Gellica set down the tea. “Well, Lowell and Cordray may not be long for the diplomatic corps, but even they know better than to kill one of their negotiating partners.”
“You told us before that no one benefits from the Squib’s death,” said Ajax.
“Exactly my point. Harlan Cedrow is the main holdout among the oil landowners. And while he certainly has emotional ties to the oil industry, he’s just putting on a show to get a better deal. He can’t actually want to chase the Squib delegation away. No Squibs mean no Squib money.”
She looked from Ajax to me. “The killer must’ve had a motive to want Haberdine dead,” she said. “Prostitution seems like a more violent field than diplomacy.”
“That’s debatable,” I mumbled.
“I’m not the cop, gentlemen. You find this guy and put him away, and I’ll gladly let you tell me you were right.” She tilted her head back, staring up at the darkening early afternoon sky. Far overhead, a small gray shape swung in lazy circles. It was a condor, one of the birds that made sky burials possible. The sky shepherd had a wingspan wider than I was tall, and a beak capable of crushing bone, but at this distance it was barely a speck. Seeing one this side of the Mount was considered by some to be good luck. Others viewed it as a portent of death.
I dropped my gaze to find Gellica staring at me.
“We’ll do whatever it takes to support your efforts, Detectives.” She flicked an ice sliver from the lip of her glass, sending it to shatter on the courtyard below. “Whatever it takes.”
We stood and thanked her for her time. She shook our hands, and I debated whether she’d held my hand a fraction of a second longer than she’d held Jax’s. Descending from the rarefied air of the balcony, we rode the elevator side by side and passed through the lobby, back to the streets of Titanshade.
Through the whole process Jax stayed silent. I’d learned enough about him to know that meant he was sitting on something. I got in the car and leaned over to unlock his door. When he got in I waited for him to turn to me. Finally I said, “What is it?”