Cold Hard Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 2)

by Alex P. Berg

  “Just Rime is fine,” she said with a smile. “Or Deborah works, too, if you prefer.”

  I shared a look with Steele. Was Tremulous Portent of Rime hitting on me? Couldn’t be. She was a good two or three decades younger than the sort I usually attracted.

  “Alright,” I said. “You’re not nearly as…abrasive as I was expecting.”

  “Oh.” The sorceress straightened in her seat. “Are you referring to the incident at the loading dock? That was a combination of stress and having to exert a firm hand with those laborers.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I said. “My experience is that individuals with—how should I say this?—skills similar to yours aren’t necessarily the most congenial of folks.”

  The city’s magically-inclined had a well-earned reputation for hard-assery. In Steele and I’s first case together, we’d run across just such a fellow—an old, grizzled fire mage by the name of Perspicacious Blaze who’d turned out to be as stiff and unrelenting as the steel he’d forged with his magic. Most other magic slingers I’d encountered over the years had similarly been total jerks.

  Rime waved her hand in the air. “Oh, nonsense. I’ll admit some of us are a little stuffy or standoffish, but most of us are friendly. You clearly haven’t spent enough time with us fun-loving sorcerers and sorceresses.”

  There it was again—that same inviting smile I’d gotten before. I was sure everyone else noticed it, too. Under other circumstances, my three colleagues would’ve egged me on mercilessly regarding Rime’s advances, but given her supernatural abilities, I think they were at a loss as to how to proceed—as was I.

  Thankfully Rime bailed us all out. “So, what can I help you with, detectives?”

  I handed the stiletto to Steele and gestured for her to take over. I didn’t trust myself not to dig the hole any deeper than it already was.

  “Well, Ms. Rime, believe it or not, we’re here to talk to you about weapons.”

  That seemed to do the trick. The enchantress lost her playful flair. “Weapons?”

  “Yes,” said Steele. “You see, we’ve been investigating a couple of homicides recently, and we’ve found something curious about the murder implements.” She placed the stiletto on the desk in front of Rime. “The weapons, when found, were both ice cold.”

  Tremulous Portent tilted her head as she picked up the dagger, the ornate one with the inlays from Terry’s murder. “Really? But they’re not now? Well that is interesting, isn’t it?” The witch turned the knife over in her hands, peering at it in a way that made me think she saw things the rest of us couldn’t. “And you say there’s another of these?”

  I dug around in my coat pocket and procured the second stiletto, which I placed on the desk in front of her. Seeing as her demeanor had shifted from playful to businesslike, I figured it was safe to chat again. Besides, I suspected I wouldn’t get pounced upon with so many witnesses around.

  “Both daggers were found plunged into the hearts of the victims,” I said, “and both remained icy for several hours after we discovered the bodies.”

  Tremulous Portent hummed in acknowledgement as she looked over the second stiletto.

  “Have you ever seen these before?” I asked.

  “Can’t say I have. I don’t have much exposure to weapons, as you might imagine.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Bummer. I had to ask though. Based on what you’ve seen so far, do you think an enchantment could be at play here?”

  Shay sighed.

  The enchantress scoffed. “No, Detective, I’m afraid not. Enchantments, though they make for excellent tales and legends, don’t exist in real life. At least not to my knowledge, or the collective opinion of the AMP.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “AMP,” she said. “The Association of Magical Practitioners. It’s our professional organization. Its members are in common agreement that enchantments aren’t possible. Their existence would break multiple laws of magic.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said, holding a finger up to my temple. “There’s laws of magic?”

  “Oh, Daggers,” said Steele. “Of course there are. There are physical laws of nature. Why wouldn’t there be laws to magic as well? But like with scientific principles, just because laws exist doesn’t mean we understand how they work. You could write a thesis about a single line or two of contested magical theory. In fact, people do it all the time.”

  Rime raised a brow. “You seem quite knowledgeable on the subject, Detective Steele. Are you a practitioner of the arts?”

  Shay shrugged. “I studied at H. G. Morton’s. Paranatural Ocular Postsensitivity. But really I’m just a dabbler.”

  Quinto chuckled. “She’s selling herself short, ma’am. Detective Steele’s abilities are quite an asset to the department.”

  A hint of color crept into Shay’s cheeks at the comment, but neither Rodgers nor Quinto could’ve seen. They stood behind us.

  “I see,” said Rime. “Well, you might as well be speaking to me in trollish when it comes to that stuff. My talents lie in thermometry.”

  “And mine in punditry,” I said. “But what about the daggers? You don’t think there’s any way they were magically chilled?”

  “Well, I didn’t say that,” the sorceress replied. “It’s entirely possible these weapons were chilled via thaumaturgic means, but there’s no way they could’ve been maintained at a depressed temperature for hours without being isolated in an insulated environment. Not unless a mage retained a thermometric hold on them, and for that the mage would’ve needed to remain in relative proximity to the weapons.”

  I furrowed my brows. “Ok, I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t completely understand all the terms you used, but are you suggesting someone with magical abilities actively cooled those weapons during and after the murders? How close would they have had to be to the action to make that feasible?” I turned to Shay. “We checked the closets at Terry’s and Creepy’s, right? I’m certain we did.”

  “Really, Daggers?” Shay blinked her long lashes at me. “That’s what you took away from that statement? You really weren’t paying attention when we stopped at Feltznoggle’s, were you? Rime, we visited a weapons expert on our way here who indicated the daggers might be hollow.”

  “Ahh!” The enchantress leaned back and nodded. “Well, that would explain things.”

  I tried to furrow my brows even further, but apparently they were at maximum furrowedness already. “I’m not following.”

  “Well, I’m not a particularly handy individual,” said Rime as she tapped the butt of one of the daggers on her desk, “but let’s see if I can figure this out. Detective Quinto, was it? You seem like a big, strapping gent. Could you come over here and give this a twist for me?”

  Quinto seemed surprised to have been called out, but he walked over anyway. “Um, sure, I suppose. What exactly is it you want me to do?”

  “Just place one hand here and the other here.” Rime wrapped Quinto’s meaty fist around the hilt of one of the stilettos and cupped the other hand, placing it over the top. “Now grab hold and give it a good twist, as if it were a jar of pickles.”

  Quinto shot me a glance.

  I nodded.

  He twisted.

  A pop sounded, and the end of the hilt came off the dagger like a cork from a bottle of bubbly.

  “Well, would you look at that,” I said.

  Rime thanked Quinto, took back the stiletto, and showed me the newly uncorked end. Within it, a metal cylinder nestled in the middle of the hilt, separated from the edge by a thin gap of air. A small stopper stuck out from the cylinder, jammed into a tiny hole in the middle.

  “What you’re looking at,” said Rime, “is essentially a crude insulated flask. A refrigerated liquid could be poured into the flask through the hole underneath this stopper, and depending on the liquid, I’d guess it could feasibly keep the dagger at a depressed temperature for a number of hours—maybe six to eight depending on ambient heat.”
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br />   I felt deflated. For the second high profile case in a row I’d convinced myself we’d been exposed to murders of a magical nature, but Tremulous Portent had unceremoniously burst my bubble. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Steele hadn’t been right about the lack of magical involvement in both cases. Maybe it was time to admit she knew far more about the subject than I did—a sentiment that applied to scientific matters as well. I still didn’t understand half of what the frost mage was talking about.

  “Ok, so I get that insulation keeps things warm and cold,” I said, pointing to the exposed innards of the knife. “But where’s the insulation here?”

  “Right here,” said Rime, running her finger along the gap between the flask and hilt.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly,” said Rime. “Air happens to be a very good insulator, assuming you can isolate it. You’ll recall what I said about the dagger only remaining cold if you segregated it in an insulated environment? Well, by suspending the flask the way you see here, air in the hilt insulates the refrigerant in the flask from air in the room. Virtually all the heat transfer would’ve occurred through the blade.”

  “And that’s what those channels in the blade are for—the ones Feltznoggle was talking about,” said Steele. “Those aren’t for blood flow, they’re for heat transfer along the blade.”

  I scratched my head. Things were starting to come together. Unfortunately, they weren’t making me look any smarter or more prescient along the way.

  “And this refrigerated liquid stuff you mentioned,” I said. “What is that exactly? Ice water?”

  “Seriously, Daggers?” Shay gave me a contemptuous glance. “Haven’t you ever cracked open a science textbook?”

  “Not all of us grew up in a family of chemists,” I said. “I prefer to spend my reading energies on masterpieces like Rex Winters.”

  At least the sorceress didn’t look at me like my brain had spontaneously turned into jelly. “Any gas, if sufficiently cooled, will turn into a liquid, Detective Daggers. You see it with water vapor all the time when it cools and turns into rain. Substances that are gaseous at room temperature work the same way.”

  Now that actually made sense. I said as much, but I also indicated to my partner that it was time to take off our safety goggles and slip back into our crime-fighting fedoras. Solving the mystery of how the daggers had remained cold didn’t do us a whole lot of good it if didn’t provide a clue as to who might’ve been in a position to use them.

  “So tell me,” I said to Rime, “what practical uses are there for refrigerated gas? Do you produce and distribute any?”

  “I do,” she said. “There’s many uses for it. Industrial applications, cold transport, that sort of thing. Universities will often need supplies for certain types of experiments. And then there’s all sorts of oddball applications like this.” She waved the knife in a thoroughly non-threatening manner.

  “Look,” I said, “I know you’re in no way connected to this investigation, and we appreciate the help you’ve already given, but is there any way you could provide us with a list of people you supply with refrigerated gasses, or liquids, or whatever you call them?”

  Tremulous Portent smiled. “For you, Detective, I wouldn’t mind at all.”

  I started to feel hot under my collar again, despite the relative chill of the frost mage’s office. I gathered the murder weapons, but before I could usher us out of the packing facility and into a less sexually ravenous environment, I had one final question to ask. “I don’t suppose you have any idea why someone would stab another person with an icy dagger, do you?”

  The ice mage shook her head. “Sorry, dear. No idea on that front.”

  I swallowed hard, gave the friendly lady a nod, and made a hasty exit.

  24

  Shay jabbed me mercilessly the entire rickshaw ride back to the precinct, mostly in regards to my uncanny ability to attract the lascivious attentions of women many years my senior. I let her attacks wash off me like a cold rain. For one thing, I didn’t have any good comebacks. My attractiveness to cougars was a verifiable fact—one that wouldn’t have been so sad if I’d also possessed the ability to attract prettier, less seasoned women as well. For another, I wasn’t feeling particularly warm to my partner at the moment and had no desire to chat. She’d intentionally kept a vital piece of information gleaned from Feltznoggle to herself, making me look foolish in the process. That’s a move I’d patented. Having Steele use it was akin to theft.

  However, the biggest reason I kept my mouth shut was because I couldn’t stop thinking about the last question I’d posed Tremulous Portent: if magic wasn’t involved in the case, then why in the world would someone go to the trouble of chilling a dagger before plunging it into some unsuspecting bum’s chest?

  Our rickshaw drivers deposited us all off in front of the station’s massive double doors. Rodgers and Quinto converged on me like wolves as we passed through the entrance, eager to rip into me with the same verve Shay had displayed during the ride. I braced myself for their onslaught, but thankfully an unexpected sight in the middle of the pit drew their attention—Cairny. She stood near our desks, turning her head to and fro and soaking in the room’s dismal splendor in long, slow blinks. Hair the color of midnight cascaded down her sides, straighter than a beam of moonlight, and she wore a black strappy dress with a hem that fell just above her knees. She looked good—in a spaced out, frightened animal sort of way.

  “Ahh,” she said. “Detective Daggers. Detective Steele. There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you, but couldn’t find you.”

  “That’s because we weren’t in, Cairny,” I said. “We’ve been out on assignment.”

  The black-haired half-fairy blinked. “Oh. Well, that would explain things.”

  I tapped a finger on my chin, wondering if perhaps Cairny’s surname should’ve been Mooncalf instead of Moonshadow.

  “What, no salutation for me and the big guy?” Rodgers walked up, a playful frown stretched across his lips.

  “You hadn’t entered our sphere of interaction yet,” said Cairny. “Thus the lack of greeting. But now you have. Hello Detective Rodgers. Hello Detective Quinto.”

  Quinto blushed a bit. “Um…hi, Cairny.”

  “So,” said Rodgers, “what’s with the dress?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Cairny. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t wear this?”

  “Don’t worry, Cairny,” said Steele as she stuck her hands in her shorts pockets. “These knuckleheads have been giving me guff about my fashion choices all day, too.”

  “What?” The moon-eyed coroner tilted her head. “Why? It’s warm. The more pressing question is why they’re all wearing jackets.”

  Shay threw up her hands. “Finally someone who understands! You and me should get a drink sometime, Cairny. I think we’d get along.”

  Cairny smiled. “Based on our previous interactions, I’d say you have anywhere between a sixty and an eight-five percent chance of being correct in that assumption, Detective Steele. So why not? A drink sounds lovely.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Rodgers. “I’m sure you ladies will have plenty of time to bond over your disregard for us gents later. But right now, how about you answer the question everyone’s itching to ask.”

  Cairny looked at Rodgers blankly.

  “How was last night?” he prodded.

  “Last night?” Cairny paused. “Well, it was a little chilly, as I remember it. It certainly wasn’t dress weather, if that’s what you’re implying. Is that what you’re implying?”

  Rodgers rolled his eyes. “No. Seriously? We all know you had a date. How’d it go?”

  Quinto cleared his throat. “Come on, pal. That’s a little personal. Not really shop talk, I’d say.”

  Rodgers frowned. “It’s not like I’m prying. I’m just curious. And when did you turn into such a prude?”

  Cairny shook her head. “Detective Quinto is right.
It’s not an appropriate topic of discussion for the workplace, so I’ll simply say I had a wonderful time.”

  Quinto smiled. For some reason that goofy grin of his had started to come back. What a weirdo.

  “So, what’s up Cairny?” I asked. “You wanted to see us?”

  She turned her big eyes on me. “Yes. That’s correct.”

  I rolled my hand in a gesture of encouragement. “And?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I finished my analyses of the bodies from yesterday’s and today’s crime scenes. I’ve found something you might find, well…interesting.”

  “In that case, why don’t we head down to the dungeon so you can show us,” I suggested.

  “Good idea,” said Cairny. She nodded to Rodgers and Quinto and headed toward the stairs.

  Shay and I followed, leaving my smile-slinging detective friend and his partner the gray-skinned brick wall behind to argue over the propriety of discussing relationships in the workplace.

  25

  We didn’t really head down to a dungeon—that’s just how most of the other homicide detectives and I referred to the morgue. It’s a fairly apt nickname, if only because it encompasses the cold, dark, dreary feel of the place—that, and both contain their fair share of recently deceased people.

  Shay and I followed Cairny into the main room, a whitewashed chamber with an entire wall of cadaver vaults where bodies were stored and slid out on rolling boards for analysis or identification by relatives. A few exam tables dotted the space, sterile stainless steel and white paint affairs that screamed order and death at the same time, which was a hard feat to accomplish.

  Terrence and Creepy lay upon two adjacent tables, spotless white sheets pulled up to their waists. The dim lighting combined with the deathly pallor of his skin wasn’t doing Terry any favors. Creepy, on the other hand, looked just as I remembered him—horrific.

  I stifled a shiver as we walked over to the tables. The magnitude of the temperature difference between the dungeon and upstairs never ceased to surprise me. I shot a glance at Shay in her V-neck top and shorts but didn’t say anything. I figured that ship had sailed.