“A dwarf, name’a Granborlanig.”
“Has anyone seen Granborlanig lately?”
“She said she last saw ’im this mornin’.”
Manfred nodded. “All right, let’s talk to her.”
Wincing, Jared said, “She ain’t gonna be much help. I just toldja everythin’ she said, an’ it took me the whole half-hour it took you two t’walk here from the castle t’get that much. Better off waitin’ for the M.E.”
Kellan shook his head. “Boneen’s off at some kind of wizard’s retreat all week. So no magickal examiner on this case. We’re on our own.”
“Shit.” Jared grinned. “Guess that streak’s in jeopardy, huh?”
Now Kellan turned on his partner. “There anyone you haven’t told about the streak?”
“What, we closed eight cases in a row! Why shouldn’t I talk about it?”
Rolling his eyes, Kellan said, “Fine, whatever. We’ve just been lucky.”
“Says you. I think it proves that we’re brilliant, and should’ve been promoted years ago.”
Kellan started to argue then decided against it.
The two lieutenants left the house, which smelled awful—the whole reason why they were called in the first place—and met with the witness out front.
“You’re the next-door neighbor?” Manfred asked.
The woman nodded. “Name’s Jannett.”
“You called this in?”
“Yah. Place smells like shit. I got kids, they can’t be smellin’ that every day.”
Kellan asked, “You last saw Granborlanig, the owner, this morning?”
“That’s right, yeah. Had him a big thick satchel, too, like he was plannin’ to go someplace.”
“Shit,” Kellan muttered.
While that piece of information was more than Jared got, they got very little beyond that. After letting her go back to her home, Kellan looked at Manfred. “I think the streak is dead.”
“Why you say that? This Granborlanig shitbrain has to be our guy.”
“Of course he is! Body smells that bad, it’s been there at least a couple days, but he was here this morning. Pretty sure he would’ve let someone know if he wasn’t the one who did it, and pretty sure he wouldn’t have packed a bag and left if he didn’t. He’s probably on a boat in the middle of the Garamin Sea at this point.”
Manfred looked like he wanted to argue, but while his lips kept twitching, he had no actual answer to Kellan’s point.
“This is why the streak shit is nonsense, by the way,” Kellan said. “I used to think you just had to be smart to close a case, but there’s so much other shit involved. I mean, we’ve solved this case, but we can’t close it without Granborlanig showing up.”
“Excuse me?”
Kellan and Manfred both turned around to see a dwarf carrying a very large satchel.
The dwarf continued: “What are you two guards doing in front of my house?”
Manfred looked at Kellan. Kellan looked at Manfred. They both looked back at the dwarf.
Slowly, Manfred asked, “Um, are you Granborlanig?”
“Yup.” Then his eyes widened. “Oh, wait, you’re here about the dead body, aren’t you?”
“So you know about that.”
“Um, yeah. And I’d be more than happy to help you investigate this horrible crime! I mean, can you imagine my surprise at coming home yesterday and finding a dead body in my house?”
Kellan bit back a guffaw with a sudden coughing fit. Manfred kept a straighter face as he said, “I gotta say, I’m having trouble imagining it.”
“Well, it’s true! I have no idea who that man is, or how he wound up dead in my house!”
“And why didn’t you contact the Castle Guard yourself?”
“Um, well, you see, I had some errands to run this morning.”
Manfred nodded. “And you say you found the body last night?”
“Yeah.”
“And left this morning to run errands?”
“Yeah.”
“And slept all night in the house with a dead body in it, instead of summoning the Guard?”
“Um.” Granborlanig cleared his throat. “Well, it was late. At night, I mean. You guys were probably asleep. I didn’t want to bother you. And this morning, like I said, I had errands.”
“Uh huh.” Manfred looked at Kellan, who was still coughing. “Look, I think you should come with us to the castle. We should talk about what happened there.”
“Sure, that’d be fine. I really want to help you guys find out who killed poor Uriik.”
Manfred and Kellan exchanged another glance. Kellan started coughing again. Manfred said, “I thought you didn’t know who it was.”
“Oh, well, you see, um, I—” Granborlanig swallowed. “Lucky guess?”
“You’d better come with us,” Manfred said, grabbing the dwarf’s arm. Then he looked at Kellan. “The streak is real.”
Kellan just shook his head.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith R.A. DeCandido is a white male in his late forties, approximately two hundred pounds. He was last seen in the wilds of the Bronx, New York City, though he is often sighted in other locales. Usually he is armed with a laptop computer, which some have classified as a deadly weapon. Through use of this laptop, he has inflicted more than fifty novels, as well as an indeterminate number of comic books, nonfiction, novellas, and works of short fiction on an unsuspecting reading public. Many of these are set in the milieus of television shows, games, movies, and comic books, among them Star Trek, Alien, Cars, Summoners War, Doctor Who, Supernatural, World of Warcraft, Marvel Comics, and many more.
We have received information confirming that more stories involving Danthres, Torin, and the city-state of Cliff’s End can be found in the novels Dragon Precinct, Unicorn Precinct, Goblin Precinct, Gryphon Precinct, and the forthcoming Phoenix Precinct and Manticore Precinct, as well as the short-story collections Tales from Dragon Precinct and the forthcoming More Tales from Dragon Precinct. His other recent crimes against humanity include A Furnace Sealed, the debut of a new urban fantasy series taking place in DeCandido’s native Bronx; the Alien novel Isolation; the Marvel’s Tales of Asgard trilogy of prose novels starring Marvel’s versions of Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three; short stories in the anthologies Aliens: Bug Hunt, Joe Ledger: Unstoppable, The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, The Best of Defending the Future, TV Gods: Summer Programming, X-Files: Trust No One, Nights of the Living Dead, the award-winning Planned Parenthood benefit anthology Mine!, the two Baker Street Irregulars anthologies, and Release the Virgins!; and articles about pop culture for Tor.com and on his own Patreon.
If you see DeCandido, do not approach him, but call for backup immediately. He is often seen in the company of a suspicious-looking woman who goes by the street name of “Wrenn,” as well as several as-yet-unidentified cats. A full dossier can be found at DeCandido.net
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