Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs

by Jamie Sedgwick

  I did what was instinctive and natural. I panicked. I had good reason to. That big brass lion may have been powered by a spell, but it wasn’t the spell I was worried about. It was the giant metal jaws that could snap me in half with one bite. By the time the spell quit working, I might already be dead. I turned and ran for the front door.

  The lion let out another low rumbling growl as it pounced. It launched itself halfway across the estate and came down a few feet behind me. The ground shook when it landed and the stone pathway shattered under its weight. I put on a burst of speed trying to outrun the creature’s massive jaws. Instead of striking out at me, the lion leapt again, vaulting over my head, and planted itself firmly between me and the tower.

  “You may not pass,” it said in a yawning voice. It lifted a paw and began licking it like a bored housecat.

  I stood there, staring at the metallic beast, doing the math in my head. There wasn’t any way around it, that was obvious. I wasn’t about to turn my back on it, either. I knew I couldn’t outrun the thing. It could leap back to the gate before I made three steps. I definitely couldn’t outmaneuver the creature. I’m too big, and I’m not that fast. There’s always the option to fight, but what were the odds of me successfully taking on a lion twice my size? It wasn’t even sporting.

  “Magnus!” I called out. “Magnus, you in there?”

  Instantly, the tower doors flew open and Magnus stepped out with Zaxyl perched on his shoulder. Magnus was dressed in black velvet pants and wore a matching vest over a black silk shirt. His cloak, made of some sort of thick wooly fabric, was also black. His long white hair was a shocking contrast against the ensemble. Silver chains flashed around his neck, sporting medallions and crystals too numerous to count. Rings decorated his fingers, sometimes two or three to an appendage. On anyone else, the guise would have been overdone, even cheesy, but on Magnus it looked downright dangerous. An aura of darkness surrounded him, as if he was clothed in the midnight sky, and the gems and jewelry he wore were actually stars flashing in the night.

  “Do you have a phone, Mossberg?” he said in an impatient tone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Next time use it, idiot.”

  He made a flourishing gesture and the lion disappeared. Suddenly it was just him and me, and I couldn’t help feeling rather foolish. “Sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions.” Magnus turned away and walked back inside, leaving the doors wide open behind him. I took that as an invitation.

  As I climbed the front stairs, I realized that the ivory tower wall was carved with thousands of images, like a tapestry. I saw humans and beasts of all sorts, and angels and demons engaged in a fierce battle. They were all moving, seemingly reenacting events like actors in a play. I had to stop and watch them for a moment. Magnus cleared his throat from inside the doorway, and I pulled myself away.

  The base of the tower was probably sixty feet across, but on the inside, the space was infinite. We stepped into the grand hall that easily consumed twice that area. Magnus led me off to the right, where we stepped into an elevator and went shooting up with such velocity that my knees went wobbly. It was an old-fashioned elevator, the kind with wrought iron walls and a gate at the front, and absolutely no protection whatsoever if you should happen to crash or stick your arm out through the rails. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I expected to see stone walls go flittering by. Instead, I saw the milky way galaxy spread out in front of me. I grasped the rail to steady myself.

  “That’s not real, is it?” I said.

  Magnus eyed me with the hollow stare of an ascended wizard. “Is anything real?” he said.

  I stared back for a moment, unsure how to answer. The ascended teach that our reality is an illusion, a curtain that falls away when we become enlightened. They must be right because they’re ascended, but I just don’t see it. “Anthony Kaiser was real,” I said. “And so is his killer.”

  “Indeed.”

  The elevator stopped and I found myself staring into a cozy little library with a crackling fireplace and walls filled with shelves of books. Magnus pulled the gate open and ushered me inside. I followed him across the room to a small round table with two leather armchairs. The tabletop appeared to be made of obsidian and it was concave, creating a space for the shiny black liquid that filled the crater in the middle. “Do you know what this is?” he said.

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “Then be still, and watch.” He waved an arm over the liquid, and it rippled like a pond with rocks skipping across the surface. It started small. Tiny scattered ripples moved across the surface, quickly spreading and feeding into each other with increasing energy. The waves began to collide, growing and multiplying until they were breaking across the surface with such violence that I feared the liquid might spill over the rim. I took a step away from the turbulent waters, not wanting them to splash me. Then, suddenly, the liquid went still and an image appeared.

  I saw Anthony and Brutus teasing waitresses at Malachi’s. I saw the chef giving the mobsters a tongue-lashing from the kitchen. They walked away, ignoring him. I saw myself in my apartment, answering the phone. I saw the elders gathering for the meeting. I saw all of these events taking place at once, like flashes of images and video stored on a computer.

  “Can it show us the killer?” I said in a whisper.

  “Quiet, fool!”

  I clamped my mouth shut. The image changed. We were inside the conference room now. The Elders were taking their seats. The servers were setting plates of food on the table. It was the wine, I thought. I checked myself before I said it aloud.

  The scene moved forward until the point that Anthony dropped dead. Then Magnus made a slight gesture with his hand and the image zoomed in, focusing on the spilled wine. The scene began playing in reverse. I saw the spilled wine slide back into the glass, and then it uprighted itself and leapt into Anthony’s hand. It rose to his lips and he drank, smiling, replacing the glass on the table.

  Gradually, the scene played out towards the beginning. The plates of food around the glass vanished one by one. The bodies in the background vanished. In a few moments, the room went still, and then the scene went black. The glass of wine was still on the table. I glanced up at Magnus.

  “What’s next?” I said. Then I clarified: “What happened before that?”

  “I don’t know. As you can see, my scrying pool is quite capable of showing me anything I wish. I can see everything that happened in the conference room, right up to the moment that the staff filled the wineglasses. Then, the scene goes black. I’ve tried it moving forward and in reverse, and even sideways. I get the same result, regardless.”

  Sideways? I thought. I decided not to ask, not only because he’d think I was an idiot, but because he just might try to explain it to me. “So you have no idea who poisoned the wine?”

  Magnus looked flustered, which was unusual for him. “I have never encountered this before.”

  I glanced down at the dark liquid, now just a smooth obsidian surface. “Who opened the wine?” I said.

  “A young half-elf named Orzo. I followed him back to the kitchen, and I fully examined the process of opening the bottle. I do not see how he could have slipped the poison into the wine without me observing it.”

  “But he did serve it,” I said. “No one else touched it but him?”

  “That is impossible to say.”

  I stroked the beard stubble on my jaw. Shulzy was already one of my best suspects. The fact that he had handled the wine almost sealed the case for me. I wondered why no one had mentioned that the previous night, when I questioned the staff. Were the other staffers covering for him? Or had he snuck into the conference room to pour the wine while nobody was looking? And how had he known which wineglass to poison? That answer was easy enough. The seating was prearranged. There were name cards at each setting.

  “What can you tell me about shinaza?” I said. I watched Magnus closely for a reaction. His eyes widened and
then he narrowed his eyebrows.

  “Why do you ask this?”

  “Because I already know what it is,” I said. “I want to know what you know.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully and then arched an eyebrow. “Are you considering me a suspect, Mr. Mossberg?”

  “Everyone is a suspect.”

  “I am ascended. How could I take part in something like a murder? It’s not possible. If I had done this, I would have lost my powers already!”

  I pulled my hat off and looked at it thoughtfully as I ran a hand through my hair. “Really?”

  “Of course! It defies the very nature of the ascended to get caught up in these mortal entanglements. I’m risking my position already, just by helping you.”

  I frowned as I put my hat back on. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but he sure sounded convincing. If he was lying, he was good at it. “The poison was made with Shinaza,” I said.

  He looked baffled. “That’s not possible. Shinaza is a harmless element. It’s like air or water… it couldn’t kill someone.”

  “It could if it was combined with tartaric acid,” I said.

  Magnus got a distant look in his eyes. “Incredible.” He muttered. “I must look into this-”

  “Sure, but first I’d like to ask you-”

  He waved his hand and I found myself standing in the tower courtyard, directing the rest of my sentence towards the front door. “-a few questions.”

  I had the fleeting impression in my mind of Magnus turning away from me as he offhandedly waved me away. I stared at the front doors for a moment, waiting for my mind to catch up with the sudden change of location.

  “Great,” I muttered. I turned around, half-expecting the giant brass lion to be there, waiting to finish me off. Fortunately, I didn’t see him. I walked quickly down the path and through the gate, trying to avoid whatever it was I’d done to provoke him the first time.

  “Have a nice day,” a smug voice called out behind me. I whipped around to see the lion’s face on the front of the mailbox, grinning at me.

  “Piss off,” I grunted.

  Chapter 7

  I checked on the prisoners when I got back to the jail. Butch was gone but he had fed them again, this time without needing to be reminded, and Vinnie had actually eaten. I guess my little chat had gotten through to him. Julius hadn’t changed his mind about anything, which wasn’t surprising. He shouted a few threats at me as soon as I appeared in the basement. Having discerned that he was well, I turned my back on him and went back upstairs to my desk.

  I settled into my old chair and it creaked under my weight. I gazed up at the clock on the wall. I had less than an hour before Shulzy came in for his shift. Not enough time to work on Roxy’s case. Even if it had been, I had no idea what I’d do. I had a stack of papers filled with names of people who I doubted had anything to do with the kidnapping. There was something about the whole thing that wasn’t clicking for me, something that I was missing. From what I could tell, Roxy didn’t have any real enemies, and though she was well off, she wasn’t wealthy enough to attract the attention of serious kidnappers. She wasn’t the type who could raise a few million dollars overnight. And this was no ordinary kidnapping. No ransom note, no phone call… it had been two days and we still didn’t have a clue as to what the kidnappers wanted.

  Butch came around the corner with a tankard in his hand and a slight glaze in his eyes. “I was just about to go looking for you,” I said.

  “Aye? Why’s that?”

  I could tell from his speech and manner that he was only slightly sloshed, but it was early afternoon. “You keep drinking like that, you’re liver’s gonna fail,” I said.

  “No worries! I’ve got three!”

  I rolled my eyes towards the ceiling. I always forget about that. The reason dwarves can (and do) drink so much is because their organs are designed differently than humans. They can drink all day long until they’re so sloshed they can’t see straight, and then they can drink a glass of water and be completely sober in fifteen minutes. Granted, there’s some bathroom time in there, but it’s still amazing.

  I’m not designed like a human either, but I’m nothing like a dwarf. The exterior differences are obvious, but the interior differences are considerable as well. My internal organs are larger and they have thicker skins, making it difficult to seriously injure me. Some of my organs are even redundant. Instead of two lungs, I have a set of four. I have two hearts. The first is normal-size and fully functional, the second is the size of a golf ball and is completely non-functional. Supposedly, it’s a backup. If my first heart is damaged or fails, the second is supposed to take its place. I have no idea if it actually works because I’ve never been shot or stabbed through the heart, and the fae don’t write that sort of stuff down. Actually, they don’t write anything down. Except spellbooks, but those are mostly written by high elves. But I’d wager the dwarves have a few of grandma’s beer recipes written down. They’re like that.

  I stood up, pushing my chair back, and pointed at the stack of papers on my desk. “Butch, this is the list of Roxy Paton’s contacts.”

  Butch’s eyes bulged. “You want me to follow up on that?”

  “No. I want you to investigate Roxy Paton.”

  He pulled his gaze away from the desk and stared at me. “I don’t get it. You think she kidnapped her own daughter?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Something just doesn’t feel right. Start with her financial records. See what you can find out about her money problems, if she has any. And check if she has insurance for this kind of thing.”

  Butch nodded thoughtfully. “Sure, Boss. One thing… where am I gonna find this out?”

  “Call Inspector Lee at the SFPD. He owes me a favor. His number’s on my desk.” I started down the tunnel and I heard him call out behind me:

  “Hey, where you goin’?”

  “I’m going to have a talk with Shulzy Orzo. I’ll be back shortly.”

  I took my time getting up to Malachi’s because I was still fifteen minutes early. I stopped at the newsstand and bought a paper from Brian. “The ‘Niners started their preseason, but don’t look at the stats,” he warned me. “Better than last season, though.”

  “Not like they used to be,” I muttered. “Maybe next year.”

  “You never give up hope, do you?” he said. I glanced up from the headlines and saw a smile on his face. That was a powerful sentiment coming from him.

  “I guess not,” I said. “How’s the stock market?”

  “Down again. Two weeks straight.”

  I folded the paper up and put it under my arm. “You ever have any good news?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a broad grin. He handed me another paper, The Daily Trumpet. The headline read: Kaiser Killed: The Life and Death of the Mob

  The Daily Trumpet is the newspaper of the fae. It’s filled with the stories that humans don’t know about. It’s full of dirt on politicians and celebrities, straight from the mouths of the fairies that live in their homes. I try not to read most of that stuff. It’s a little too sensational for my tastes. Besides, it’s not really fair to expose people in that way. A fairy giving up the dirt on a celebrity is like a trusted friend who tells the whole world all of your most intimate secrets. At best, it’s in bad taste.

  “Don’t believe everything you read,” I said.

  “But he is dead though, right?” Brian said.

  I nodded slightly. “Yeah, he’s dead.” I could see the questions running through Brian’s mind, but he knew better than to ask me about an active investigation. I thanked him for the paper and headed upstairs.

  Malachi only had a few customers when I arrived, but I could tell he was ramping up for the evening rush. A group of employees went in ahead of me, all carrying their work shirts and aprons with them. They disappeared through the kitchen doors as I stepped into the waiting area. Malachi was there, standing on a stepladder, dusting his shelves that were full of
cooking awards. He waved at me when he heard me come in. “Evening Hank, how are things?”

  “Is Shulzy here yet?” I said.

  “Just got here,” Malachi said, nodding towards kitchen. “He’s in the back room.”

  “Thanks.” I walked through the double swinging doors, past the row of stoves and grills where Malachi’s three chefs were busy filling up their prep tables, and found Shulzy at the lockers in the back, just where Malachi said he’d be. Shulzy was chatting with two gnomish dishwashers as he changed into his busboy uniform. They all clammed up when they saw me coming. Shulzy glanced at me with a nervous look in his eyes.

  He looked more or less like every other goblin I’d ever seen. Pale, grayish skin. Deep, sunken eyes and a dark stare. Wrinkled skin with a long, pointed nose. Right out of the comic books. “What do you want?” he said with exaggerated courage.

  I decided right then that I was going to need him alone. If I tried to question him in this setting, he’d keep acting tough right up until I had to arrest him. “Come with me,” I said in a firm voice. “We’re gonna have a chat.”

  I took Shulzy all the way back down to the jail. It felt like I was running in circles, but I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer out of him anywhere else. The jail was the only place I’d have the privacy I needed, and the intimidation factor he needed. We passed Butch in the hallway and he fell in behind us, keeping an eye on Shulzy. When we reached the jailhouse, I pulled out the chair in front of my desk and motioned Shulzy towards it.

  “Have a seat,” I said.

  Butch wandered in behind us and plopped down in the chair behind my desk, opposite Shulzy, with a vicious sneer plastered on his face. He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, staring at Shulzy like a hungry wolf. Butch was doing a nice job of intimidating the suspect, and it seemed to be working so I didn’t put a stop to it. I leaned up against my desk and gave the young goblin a serious look. I saw his demeanor changing, fear replacing his earlier defiance.