Fine Blue Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 4)

by Alex P. Berg

  “No, Daggers,” said Cairny. “That wasn’t what I was going to say. It’s that—”

  I ignored our coroner’s protests and flipped up the sheet. Then I blinked a few times.

  13

  A guy with a bloated, black and blue face, long sandy blond hair, and a thin moustache stared at the ceiling with dead eyes.

  “Who the hell is this?” I asked.

  Cairny joined me at my side. “A narc. A good one, by all accounts. Morales found him in his apartment yesterday afternoon, along with quite a bit of drug paraphernalia. Looks like he relapsed without anyone knowing. The evidence in his place was pretty damning, but Morales asked me to take a look at him. Make sure his death was an overdose and not something more nefarious disguised to look as such.”

  “Ok…” I said slowly. “That’s a nice story. But what I meant was, where the hell is our stiff? Where’s Lanky?”

  I glanced around the examination room, which stubbornly remained as empty as when I’d first entered it thirty minutes ago.

  Cairny shrugged. “Beats me. As I said, I’ve been out most of the day.”

  I glanced at Quinto, who stood next to Shay with his hands in his pockets and a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Well?” I asked.

  The big guy met my eyes. “You talking to me?”

  “No, I’m talking to the enormous lug behind you who’s also wearing an oversized purple duster,” I said. “Didn’t you help Phillips bring Lanky back to the precinct?”

  “Well, yes and no,” he said.

  I rolled my fingers in the air. “The no part being?”

  “I accompanied Phillips and the stiff back to the station,” said Quinto, “but I didn’t help bring the body to the morgue. I let Phillips and those other beat cops take care of it. I figured they would.” He scratched his head.

  “Really?” I said. “You’re the size of a small barge, and you made other people do the heavy lifting?”

  “Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I relish it,” he said. “Honestly, do you have any idea how often people ask me to help them move?”

  I planted my hands on my hips and shook my head. “I can’t believe that Phillips character…”

  Steele pointed a stern finger in my direction. “You be nice to him, now.”

  “What?” I said. “What did I do?”

  “You were unnecessarily mean to him back at the crime scene,” said Shay. “You know as well as I do there was nothing he could’ve done to prevent that sergeant major from taking charge of the army enlistees. I’m sure whatever happened here, he’s not to blame.”

  I grunted. Steele was far more trusting than I. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll do my best to be nice.” Which was a clever way of hedging my bets in case the eager beaver had done something really stupid. “Now why don’t we find Phillips to see what exactly did happen.”

  Cairny stayed behind, citing the need to get back to work on the ragged narc, but Quinto joined us as we embarked on our second straight tour of the precinct grounds. After not finding Phillips anywhere, I stopped by the Captain’s office and asked the bulldog for his beat. With the information in hand, I grudgingly stepped back outside, mentally preparing my feet for the long journey that was sure to follow. Before I’d even taken three steps up 5th Street, however, I heard a few chuckles and guffaws, as well as a voice: Phillips’, coming from nearby.

  We found our prey in the alley adjacent to the station, chatting with a pair of other bluecoats, one of whom took a long draught from a briar pipe and puffed the smoke out of the corner of his lips.

  “Phillips!” I said. “Where the hell have you been!”

  Thankfully for Phillips, he wasn’t the one sucking on the pipe, otherwise the thing might’ve gone flying.

  “Daggers! Sir,” he said as he came to attention. “What can I do for you?”

  Steele dug her fingers into my side and whispered in my ear. “Remember. Be nice.”

  I forced myself to take a deep breath before continuing. “The body, Phillips. What happened to it?”

  “The body, sir?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Lanky. The corpse from the crime scene this morning. With the hair and the beard and the noticeable funk. I understand you brought it back to the precinct alongside Detective Quinto.” I jerked my thumb in the big guy’s direction, who did his best to block out the sun at the alley’s mouth. “Where is it?”

  “I…delivered it,” said Phillips.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “To the morgue.”

  “Our morgue?”

  “Of course.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

  I flinched as Steele’s claws dug into my ribcage.

  Phillips’ lips flattened as he pushed them together, but other than that he did a good job of hiding his displeasure. “Absolutely. Ask Poundstone, or the other beat cop who helped us out. Whatever his name is. Ferguson, I think.”

  I frowned, but I also kept my composure—thanks in large part to Shay and her needlelike fingers. “Perhaps you could show us exactly where you left it?”

  Phillips nodded and pushed his way past me and the living wall of muscle that constituted Quinto. We followed him back inside the precinct, down the stairs, and into the morgue, where we found Cairny slicing into the narc’s throat with a wicked-looking scalpel.

  “You’re back!” Cairny smiled and waved with the scalpel in hand.

  I averted my eyes from the cadaver’s skin flaps by resting them on Phillips. His jaw fell, and I saw his tongue twist as he raked it across his teeth. His eyes darted back and forth across the room, and he blinked.

  “I…don’t understand,” he said. “The body’s gone.”

  I thought of a vulgar response, but pared it down for Shay’s benefit. “No kidding.”

  I leveled a cool glance at Phillips, but I needn’t have. As the gravity of the charge settled in, the poor kid’s attitude spontaneously melted from a frosty frustration to a blubbering puddle of ass-covering.

  “Sir, you’ve got to believe me. We left the body right there, on that table.” Phillips pointed it out. “Poundstone and Ferguson will back me up, I swear. We even filled out and stamped the clipboard at the door!”

  Quinto walked over and glanced at the clipboard in question. He nodded. “They did. Ink’s still fresh.”

  “Did anyone sign the body out?” I asked.

  If family members came to collect the body for burial or cremation, they’d need proper authorization, and the event would be recorded on the clipboard, among other places. Not that anyone could sign off on the collection of a murder victim before Cairny conducted her investigation, or that any family members would be around to collect Lanky at all. We didn’t even know his real name yet, much less had we contacted his next of kin.

  Quinto looked again. “Nope.”

  Steele pressed her lips together and wet them with her tongue. “So…what? Are we to assume someone broke in here and stole the body? Who would do such a thing?”

  I ground my teeth together and growled under my breath. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”

  14

  I burst into the military police offices at the New Welwic Main army base like a tornado of piss and vinegar, spraying everything and everyone in my way with the unsavory cocktail.

  “Where’s Agent Blue?” I demanded. “Where is that sneak thief? In his office?”

  The same man and woman as before guarded the castle gates, but this time, both of them stood in response to my appearance. The woman, sensing the potential ramifications of my violent outburst, sped off down the hallway in the direction of Blue’s office, while the young man moved to intercept me. A mask of impassiveness covered his face, but he hunched slightly as he approached me, his arms held at his sides, ready for action.

  “Sir,” he said. “You need to calm down.”

  “Calm down?” I said. “Calm down? What I need are answers. Explanations. And an apology. Quite
frankly, this is absurd! In all my years on the force, I’ve never had to deal with such blatant disrespect for established police etiquette.”

  “Sir,” said the young man, approaching me as if I were a wild animal that might bolt as easily as strike, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’m sure if we calm down we’ll—”

  The front door creaked behind me. I spared a glance its way and spotted Shay entering the building, looking even more mortified than she’d been for the last fifteen minutes of our walk. She didn’t even meet my eyes.

  The look of despondency almost made me reconsider my strategy, but gosh darn it, if I didn’t create a scene, then who would? Shay wasn’t anywhere near as confrontational as I was, and given Quinto had elected to stay at the precinct—ostensibly to catch up on paperwork, but probably to spend more time around his fair-skinned, death-obsessed belle—then by default, the task fell upon my shoulders. And I didn’t for a minute think a goody two shoes, ‘please and thank you, ma’am’ approach would get us anywhere with Agent Blue and his well-dressed army of bootlickers. They needed to know Shay and I and the rest of the police department meant business, and that we wouldn’t stand for surreptitious body-snatching shenanigans and insincere tidings of camaraderie and goodwill delivered with a white-toothed smile.

  I ranted and raved a bit more, trying to retain the heat in my blood until Agent Blue showed up, but I found I didn’t have to try hard. I’d worked myself into a frenzy, and to be fair, it wasn’t all an act. I was angry.

  I also didn’t have to wait long. Agent Blue sprinted up the hall, with the female soldier hot on his heels. His lips pressed tightly against one another, and his clenched jaw hardened his face.

  “What in the world is going on here?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” I said. “When last we parted ways, you made a grand show of how you wanted to pool our resources and work together. How if you were in our shoes, you’d be the grand poobah of cooperation. So what exactly happened to that? Change your mind? Or was it a disingenuous platitude all along?”

  Blue nodded at the female soldier in a ‘Scram, I’ve got this’ sort of way. She retreated to her desk, and the ACIC officer held his hand out down the hallway. “I’ll be happy to discuss whatever problem has arisen, Detective Daggers, as long as you can rein in your anger and discuss this in a fashion fit for adults. Now…my office, if you please?”

  I grunted and stomped off in the indicated direction. Behind me, I heard the soft patter of Shay’s feet as she followed, and picked up on a quiet, “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t see the shake of her head that surely accompanied the apology, but her efforts to undermine me in front of Agent Blue did nothing to help my mood.

  I settled myself in one of the investigator’s chairs. Shay followed suit, as did Blue behind his desk.

  “Now,” said Blue. “Perhaps you could explain to me what this is all about?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Blue,” I said. “The body. Where is it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said you wanted to work together,” I said. “But now you go and steal the body from us? And right out from under our own noses, without alerting anyone or filing any paperwork. It would be one thing to have done so when you took back your recruits, but to wait until we’d already returned the body to our own morgue? That’s a really low blow. Like right in the gonads.”

  Blue glanced at Steele with narrowed eyes.

  “The slain transient’s body was delivered to our precinct earlier today,” explained Steele. “It’s since gone missing.”

  Blue shifted his eyes back to me. “And you think I had my men take it?”

  I gave the elf a fake, toothless smile and flicked my hands in the air.

  “But why would we want the cadaver?” asked Agent Blue.

  “That’s what I argued,” said Steele.

  I shook my head. Apparently Agent Blue, like my partner, lacked the sort of overactive imagination that came from reading large amounts of speculative fiction. “I can think of several reasons. But, to give you the condensed version, I think there’s some clue about the manner of the man’s death you—or the army as a whole—doesn’t want leaking out.”

  Agent Blue snorted. “Detective Daggers, I assure you I didn’t instruct any of my men to take the victim from your morgue. And I can also assure you none of my men acted in such a capacity without my knowledge. That’s simply not how things are done in the army. And beyond that, I was fully honest in my stated desire to work together. You seem to think otherwise, but we’re allies in this investigation, and I’m fully capable of admitting your forensics team is probably better versed than mine. Frankly, I’d prefer your team examine the body.”

  “You see, Daggers?” said Steele. “This is exactly what I told him on our way here, Agent Blue.”

  “And I thank you for the vote of confidence, Detective Steele.” Elmorodil smiled, and his eyes twinkled.

  One of the demons inside me reared its ugly head again. I tried to slap it down, but it growled and threatened to bite me. “So… Let’s assume you’re telling the truth. If you didn’t take the body, then who did? And why?”

  The ACIC agent leaned back in his chair and stroked his smooth jaw. “Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? As you said, it would have to be a party that didn’t want some piece of evidence to be uncovered. But who? Even though they’re persons of interest, Sergeant Holmes and Privates Chavez and Delvesdeep have been on base since the incident this morning.”

  I drummed my fingers on my chair’s armrest. “Perhaps this is a question we could pose to that trio directly.”

  Blue snorted, but his face softened. “I did say I’d be willing to let you talk to my men and women assuming you had valid reasons. Well, I admit this qualifies. And you have my attention as well. I’m assuming you’re both currently available?”

  Steele and I nodded.

  “Good,” said Blue. “We can start with Sergeant Holmes. To the best of my knowledge, he’s in the infirmary having his wounds attended to. Follow me.”

  15

  We dogged Blue’s footsteps as he stepped outside, skirted the perimeter of the perfectly manicured lawn, and headed north at a cross street. Though part of me wanted to badger the ACIC agent into releasing more useful tidbits of information regarding our case, that desire was tempered by the fact that I’d have to talk to the smug-faced elf to do so. Luckily, my years in the force prior to Steele’s arrival—years spent alongside my stone-faced fossil of an ex-partner, Griggs—had helped me develop my non-verbal communication skills. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and glared at the back of Blue’s skull in what I imagined to be an intimidating and disapproving manner.

  We soon arrived at a three-story rectangular box that displayed all the best architectural design elements of military construction—namely four walls and a roof—but despite its uninspired construction, the thing stuck out among its counterparts like a sore thumb. The structure blazed a brilliant white, like a daisy in a field of grass, albeit grass with a decidedly unhealthy olive hue. I rubbed my thumb against the side of the building as we approached, and it came away clean as it would from paint, not whitewash—which didn’t surprise me, given the military budget.

  It seemed grossly unfair that between our two ostensible peace-keeping organizations, the police department got such a short end of the cash stick. Then again, the chance of dying in the line of police duty was markedly lower than in the army, and while the GIs had no shortage of coin to buy fancy equipment and to hire fire- and lightning-wielding magical bigwigs, the guys doing the majority of the dying out on the front lines tended to be paid even worse than I was. I told myself to keep that in mind the next time we ran out of coffee or the Captain decided to treat me as his own personal side of beef jerky.

  Blue pushed on into the hospital, and Shay and I followed. More white covered the walls, and ceramic tiles sparkled underfoot, freshly mopped with a cleaner that had left behind a faint smell o
f orange peels and ammonia. Metal-framed cots lined the walls, each with a partition between them—a steel bar fitted with metal rings and a curtain, much like one might find around a shower. All the curtains had been pushed back, revealing the beds as empty.

  In response to the front door’s creak, a nurse approached us from the far side. I glanced at her, blinked, and tried not to look disappointed. Rather than the tight white miniskirt and matching red-trimmed corset I’d come to expect from the history course I’d taken at the local gentleman’s club, the nurse wore a long-sleeved checkered dress shirt, over which lay a white apron and skirt combo that came to her mid shin. In addition, the nurse underneath the outfit wasn’t much to look at. Between her motley collection of chocolate-brown skin, pale hair, mismatched eyes, and ears that looked like they might help her take flight at any moment, I wasn’t even sure if she was human.

  She saluted as she stopped in front of Agent Blue. “Nurse Billings, at your service sir.”

  Blue responded in kind. “We’re looking for Sergeant Timothy Holmes. Know where we can find him?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Second floor. Far side of the building. Should be easy to find, sir. Only occupied bed on that side at the moment.”

  Blue nodded and headed toward the nearest stairwell. I mounted the steps behind him.

  We found Timmy propped up on a stack of pillows. His tan fatigue-clad legs stretched out before him on the bed, but he’d shrugged out of his official-looking top and into a white undershirt that showed off his muscular arms. As I’d predicted, the bruise underneath his eye had spread, coloring his skin with a brilliant shade of violet that would’ve looked far more appealing in the setting sky than it did on his face. Black stitches peeked through his bushy eyebrow, and given his reduction in clothing, I was able to make out a number of other bruises blotching his chest and arms.