Man of Steele

by Alex P. Berg

I skidded to a halt in front of them, speaking between gulps of air. “Detective Steele. Where… Where did she go?”

  One of the oldest runners answered for the group. “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Detective Steele,” I said, still panting. “My partner. You know her. The pretty one. She left the precinct an hour and a half ago, two hours tops. Did anyone see her leave?”

  The same runner gave me a nod. “Sure did, Detective. Took one of the rickshaws. Told the driver to head to the UNW auditorium, I think.”

  Then why the hell hadn’t she met her parents there? I turned toward the rickshaws that waited at the foot of the steps, waiting patiently for patrons from the department, and hopped into the first in line.

  “The UNW auditorium,” I told the driver. “Hoof it. No. Scratch that. Go at a reasonable pace. I need to keep an eye on the streets.”

  The driver shot me a confused glance before shrugging and turning to his push bar. “You got it.”

  We took off east down 5th, the driver moving at a steady lope. I kept my eyes on the street, looking for something, anything. I wasn’t even sure what. Sight of Shay, obviously, but anything that might signify signs of a struggle. An abandoned rickshaw. A large scary ogre with a gang tattoo on his left forearm. A pool of blood. Hell, I didn’t know.

  Gods, she couldn’t really have been attacked, could she? Something must’ve come up. Maybe she forgot a present for her brother at her apartment and while there accidentally locked herself in a closet. Maybe she thought of something critical to the case while en route to the ceremony and made a last-second pit stop. She might still be chatting up a witness. Or perhaps she saw something on the street that caught her eye, not necessarily something related to our current case. A crime in progress that her sense of justice forced her to intervene in. For all I knew, she could be back at the precinct right now, booking some ne'er-do-well into the cages.

  Except that the runners at the front would’ve seen her returning with the criminal in cuffs. And that Shay would’ve sent a runner to her parents at the first chance she got. She sent word last night. She wouldn’t have neglected to do the same today.

  My heart continued to pound, fighting back the weight of the invisible elephant sitting on my chest. A thousand scenarios played through my mind at supersonic speed, trying to distract me from my job scanning the streets. Succeeding, in fact. It took me a minute after turning onto Briar Avenue to realize the driver’s mistake.

  “Hey,” I shouted at the man. “I said the University of New Welwic auditorium. Seventh Street’s the most direct route.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said in a rather annoyed tone. “Heard you the first time. But there’s a spill on Seventh. Snagged me in a mess of traffic earlier. Not sure if it’s been cleaned up yet, but no point in tempting fate.”

  “Spill? What sort of spill?”

  “A chemical of some sort, sir. City crews had the area blocked off. It was a bloody mess trying to fight for pass throughs to Sixth and Eighth.”

  “You didn’t give a ride to a young half-elf detective from the Fifth earlier today, did you?”

  “No, sir. Got caught up in the traffic ferrying a woman from Eleventh down to the southern end of the Pearl. Hit the blocked area on the north side.”

  “Turn around,” I said. “Go back. Take Seventh.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Sir, I think it’d be better to—”

  “I’ll pay you for your time,” I said. “Take Seventh. The most direct route from the precinct to the auditorium.”

  He shook his head as he wheeled the rickshaw around and headed back the way we came. An eternity of minutes passed before we arrived at the scene of the spill.

  It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. A quartet of city employees in bright yellow vests lingered around a makeshift barrier of yellow tape hung from temporary posts erected around a darkened, slick-looking section of road. One of the workers ushered pedestrians and rickshaws through a gap next to the buildings on the left-hand side while the other workers, all of them wearing cotton masks over their mouths, stood to the side, mops in hands but otherwise making no attempts to clear the spill.

  I sprang from my rickshaw and burst past the crowd. Behind me, my driver yelled something about payment.

  I nearly collided with the head worker waving people through. “You in charge here?”

  “Whoa, there, pal,” he said. “One at a time. Back of the line.”

  I ripped my badge from my coat pocket. “Detective Jake Daggers, NWPD. How long have you been here?”

  “What?” He glanced at the badge. “I don’t know. A couple hours, ever since someone called in the spill. Like I said, back of the line.”

  I snapped the billfold closed and jammed it in my pocket. “I am not screwing around here, guy. As of two seconds ago, this whole area is a crime scene, and I’m not talking environmental health hazard charges. I’ve got an officer missing and a suspected assault and kidnapping on my hands.”

  The worker’s eyes widened. “Holy harvest. You serious?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking? Get everybody back. Close the thoroughfare. Now!”

  Maybe the head construction grunt got his job because of his pipes. He bellowed with a voice that carried over the crowd. “Alright, everyone turn it around! Seventh’s closed. Jerry, Paul, you guys get your asses on the other side of the tape. Push that crowd back to Eighth. Dunbar, help out, will ’ya? Come on everyone. Don’t give me that lip. Let’s go!”

  The mop brigade abandoned their janitorial gear and hopped to it, helping secure the area and push back the rickshaws and pedestrians. My driver continued to bark at me.

  “Take it up with the precinct,” I told him. “In fact, head back there and tell them to send men. You’ll get double the pay. Move it!”

  I spotted a rickshaw breaking toward an alley and moved to cut it off. “No way! Back to Sixth. Alleys are off-limits!”

  “They are?” said the laborer-in-chief.

  “Yes. Get your men on it.”

  He shouted. The men moved. The crowds murmured some more.

  I didn’t give the head grunt any time to settle into a groove. I grabbed him by the arm. “Tell me what happened here. Everything you know.”

  “Whoa. Relax. I’ll tell ’ya. I got here a couple hours ago, like I said. There was a spill across the road. Not sure what. Was making a right awful smell. Maybe something for treating leather or making soap, beats the hell outta me. Whoever’d spilled it had taken off. Didn’t hang around to file a report or nothing. Maybe they’d stolen it, I don’t know. Me and the guys tried to clear everyone out, let the fumes blow away, but you know folks in this city. They kept pressing up on us. When the smell wasn’t too bad no more, we opened up a little corridor, there on the side for folks to get through. We sent for a fire engine to help us wash down the street, but it hasn’t showed. Not a high priority, I guess.”

  “And before you opened up that passage on the side,” I said. “Were you turning people back to Sixth and Eighth?”

  “I wasn’t forcing them anywhere,” he said. “Just kept them out of the hazard area, that’s all.”

  “Some people took the alleys?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, I guess. Probably. I wasn’t paying ’em any mind.”

  “Did you see a young woman? Half-elf, wearing a white dress. She would’ve been in a rickshaw.”

  The man shook his head. “Sorry, Detective. Ain’t ringing a bell.”

  The pot of emotions boiled within me, this time wrought with more rage than fear. Gods, wasn’t anyone paying any attention? Didn’t anyone care that Shay might’ve been attacked in broad daylight?

  Rather than lash out, I rushed into the nearest alley, a narrow strip that ducked behind the clothing shop immediately below the spill. It hooked around and dumped me back onto 7th, so I picked another, this one wide enough for a rickshaw and with a couple ruts worn into the earth underfoot. I followed them
to 6th, again finding nothing. Feeling frantic, I travelled back to the spill and picked another, this one with fainter ruts in the dirt.

  I made it halfway past a group of faded brownstones before pausing at an intersection. The midday light cut most of the way across the homes’ brick sides, but shadows still darkened patches of dirt at the base. In one of those patches, I spotted a rumpled tarp. In addition to the wheel tracks heading away from the spill site, there was another, moving from the discarded tarp and merging into the established ruts.

  It could’ve been nothing—but maybe it was everything.

  16

  I slammed my fist on the Captain’s desk. “Gods damn it! How could I have been so stupid? I let her go. She’s my partner, and I just let her...walk out, without anyone to watch over her. Shit!”

  Captain Knox stood behind her desk. She took a step forward, her hands held out before her. “Daggers, take a deep breath. I understand you’re angry and upset. You have every right to be.”

  “You’re damn right I do,” I said. “This is Steele we’re talking about. You know what she means to me. And they took her! In broad daylight! Those sons of bitches…”

  The Captain took another step. “We don’t know that.”

  I glared at her. “Are you serious? She didn’t show up at her brother’s graduation ceremony after telling me and her parents she’d be there. She didn’t show up at her parent’s apartment. She’s not at her place, either. So where the hell is she, exactly? At the park working on her tan, or taking in musical theater?”

  Captain Knox glared right back. “I’m on your side, Daggers. We’re going to find her, but getting pissed off and acting like a bull in a china shop isn’t going to help!”

  “Gods, Knox, if I can’t get angry, what am I supposed to do? I’m drowning here. I can barely breathe.”

  My ribs pressed against my lungs with the weight of ten thousand bricks, and a vein in my forehead threatened to pop. I was simultaneously on the verge of violence and tears. I turned to the window, not wanting the Captain to see me in this state. Not that she wasn’t fully aware of my mood. The broken remains of the coffee mug I’d sent flying from her desk when I first arrived were a pretty good indicator of how I felt.

  “I know it’s difficult to stay focused in a situation like this, Daggers,” she said, her voice at my back, “but think this through. We don’t know for a fact if Detective Steele was kidnapped, but let’s say she was. You looked through the alleys. You found a tarp at the side of a building, a cover for a cart that may recently have been moved.”

  “It had been.”

  “Fine. Let’s say it had. Was there blood at the scene?”

  “No.”

  “Sign of a struggle?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you trust Steele to handle herself in a stressful situation? To not panic? To not lash out without thinking things through first?”

  “Yes, damn it,” I said, spinning from the window. “But we’re talking about her possible abduction here, or worse! I was attacked by trained killers last night. If the same people behind my assault have her, what do you think the end game is?”

  “Your assailants attacked you directly,” said Knox. “The evidence suggests the same didn’t happen to Steele, if it happened at all.”

  I held Knox in my focus. “Do you doubt me?”

  “No, but whatever’s happened to Detective Steele, you can be sure we’ll get to the bottom of it. We’ve got twenty men on the scene as we speak, combing through those alleys, investigating the scene of the spill, talking to folks in the neighboring shops and apartments. Boatreng has the runners from out front, getting a likeness of Steele’s rickshaw driver on paper. The city workers are on site, providing us every detail they can remember. We’ve put an APB out for the cart that caused that chemical spill. We’ve got more leads than men to follow them. Whoever’s behind this won’t be able to hide. Not for long.”

  The weight over my chest refused to lift. “We may not have long, Captain.”

  The gods took pity on me. Before Knox could force an awkward pep talk on me, Rodgers and Quinto burst through the door to her office.

  “Captain?” Quinto shot a thumb toward the front of the precinct. “Is it true? The officers outside were saying—”

  “We don’t know anything at this point,” said Knox, “other than the fact that Detective Steele is missing. As I’ve explained to Detective Daggers, we’re going to get to the bottom of it as soon as physically possible. No one messes with the NWPD and gets away with it.” She affixed me with a glare that could crack granite before looking to the others. “What did you learn about the poison?”

  “Nothing much,” said Rodgers. “Certainly not in light of what’s happened.”

  “Much isn’t nothing,” said Knox.

  “My expert came to the same conclusion Cairny did,” said Quinto. “He couldn’t think of any poisons that have both of the effects we’re searching for. In his opinion, we’re looking at a combination of chemicals, which again doesn’t explain why such chemicals would’ve been affixed to the weapon used to attack Daggers.”

  “Guys,” I said. “The poison is the last of our concerns. We need to find Shay!”

  “We will, Detective,” said Knox with another piercing glance. “It’s all connected, or it’s likely to be. It doesn’t matter which thread ultimately unravels the sail. Detectives Rodgers? Quinto? Keep an eye on Daggers. I’m going to grab him a coffee.”

  She left and headed toward the break room. Rodgers shot me a confused stare. “The Captain is getting you coffee?”

  I paced at the far side of the room. “I’m a little on edge, in case you couldn’t tell. She’s trying to help. Either that or she’s so frustrated with me that she’s extracting herself from the situation before she does something she’ll regret.”

  “You didn’t insult her, did you?” asked Quinto.

  “Come on,” I said. “Of course not. But, gods damn it guys, this is Shay we’re talking about. She’s missing! She could be… She could…”

  My throat closed up before I could get anything out.

  Quinto took a step forward. “Daggers…”

  I held up a hand. “I appreciate the sentiment, but save your hugs or pats on the back for later. Right now all I want is to break something. Preferably the face of whoever abducted Steele.”

  “What happened to her?” asked Rodgers.

  I gave him the cheat sheet version.

  Rodgers whistled. “So you think someone knew she was on her way to the ceremony, used a chemical spill to set up a road block, and diverted her into an alley to abduct her? Daggers, no offense, but that’s—”

  “Improbable? Unlikely? Insane? I know. But someone also followed me home last night and tried to murder me, all during a night where I didn’t know what restaurant we’d be attending until Shay and I got there. But Shay knew. If someone’s been spying on her, they might’ve known where we’d be heading. Just like they might’ve known her plans for today.”

  “Didn’t she change her plans after you got attacked?” said Quinto.

  “Her attackers probably changed plans, too. The chemical spill seems rushed. Haphazard. Maybe. I’m guessing. The point is—Shay’s gone!”

  “Then we’d better get down to the spill right away,” said Quinto. “Start pounding on doors. Showing Shay’s picture around.”

  “The department’s already on that.” Captain Knox returned with a steaming mug. She handed it to me. “Manpower we have in spades. It’s brainpower we need. Daggers. Quinto. Rodgers. I need you to get me a lead, not to exhaust yourselves on legwork. We need a plan.”

  I gripped the mug of coffee tight, worried it might shatter in my grip. Anger coursed through me. Anger that someone had attacked me. Anger that someone had taken Shay, and most of all, anger at my impotence and inability to do anything about either of those. “Does pounding thugs’ faces in until someone talks count a
s a plan?”

  “Not unless you know whose face to pound,” said Knox, taking a seat. “Think. What’s the most productive angle we have? The best one gets all of your attentions, because don’t think for a minute I’m letting you out of here alone, Daggers.”

  Quinto started in on something to do with tracing Steele’s steps from the precinct, but I barely heard him. I was still stuck on something from a moment ago. Not unless you know whose face to pound in.

  I left the Captain’s office, mug still in hand, and headed to my desk, confused questions and calls trailing me. As I’d hoped, something waited for me there. A duplicate of the image Boatreng had shown me earlier, the one of the hostile ogre. Could it be…?

  “Detective Daggers.” The Captain’s voice rung out over my shoulder. “Are you even listening to us?”

  I turned toward her. “You said Rodgers and Quinto were with me, right?”

  She narrowed an eye. “Yes…”

  The pair of detectives had followed her out. Both looked at me with combinations of doubt and concern.

  “Do you put much faith in gut feelings, Captain?” I said.

  “Not under normal circumstances.”

  “This circumstance is anything but, though.”

  Knox eyed the drawing. She took her time answering. “You’re free to follow whatever lead you wish, Detective. But you know the stakes.”

  “I do.” I nodded to Rodgers and Quinto. “Come on, guys. We’re taking a trip to Coldgate.”

  17

  A balmy sea breeze blew as Rodgers, Quinto, and I approached Coldgate Prison’s exterior wall, mortared granite six feet thick and reinforced with iron bars the size of a pure-bred giant’s calves. It loomed over us, three stories tall not counting the sharpened iron spikes and barbed wire that adorned the top. The wall could incapacitate even the strongest of non-magical criminals, but given the city council’s cautious nature and the populace’s penchant for lawsuits, it alone had been deemed insufficient—which was why Coldgate perched on the tip of a peninsula jutting south into the Wel Sea, and why the surrounding land had been stripped of vegetation, littered with blockades and barbed wire, and surrounded with another ten foot fence.