by Alex P. Berg
“You’ve already got all that junk tagged?”
Rodgers gave me a snarky look. “Yeah. There was this blabbermouthed jerk here earlier who wouldn’t let us get any work done, but as soon as he left our efficiency skyrocketed. Go figure.”
I gave Rodgers a knowing wink. “Oh yeah. I’ve heard about that guy. Real pain in the ass, isn’t he?” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Word is he’s angling for a promotion. Might even replace the Captain one day.”
“Well…there goes the neighborhood,” said Rodgers.
We both chuckled. Shay even joined in on the fun. She really did do better when there was someone else besides me around.
“So, are you and Quinto still intent on extorting that drink out of me?”
I made the statement in jest. Truth was, I hadn’t gone out for a drink with the guys in some time. Seeing how well I’d fared on my last solo drinking excursion, perhaps a bit of social imbibing would do me well.
Rodgers shook his head. “No… Well, I shouldn’t say that. I bet Quinto’ll hound you mercilessly until you buy him that pint. But I’ve got to head home. Allison gets cranky when she has to deal with the rascals by herself at dinner time.”
Allison was Rodgers’ wife. Rodgers started dating her about five years back, and in the blink of an eye, he’d reformed his bachelor ways and gotten hitched. Now they had a couple of girls running around, one four and the other two. From what little time I’d spent around them, they made bouncing ping-pong balls seem lethargic. If I were Allison, I’d be counting down the seconds until Rodgers got home every night.
Of course, it’s easy for me to see that now. Back when I was married, the same thought never wormed its way into my brain. I’d work late all the time, and then I’d wonder why my wife, Nicole, would be furious at me when I’d get home. She’d badger me about how little I helped, and remark that our son would occasionally need to lay eyes on his father in order to form lasting memories of him.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I didn’t understand what she was saying, but we never had that much to go around. If I didn’t work hard, who’d put food on the table? She certainly wouldn’t. So I’d yell at her. Then she’d cry, and our little slugger would wake up and start bawling, too.
I wish I could say late nights were the main reason Nicole left me, but that would be a lie. The reasons for that were too numerous for even me to remember. I bet Nicole could still rattle them off though.
“Hey, I understand,” I said after a pause. “You’ve got to take care of your family. Give my regards to Allison, alright?”
“Sure thing, Daggers.”
I moved toward my desk before I heard Rodgers give his hardwood a slap.
“Oh. I almost forgot,” said Rodgers. “Cairny wanted to see you guys. Said she’s got her coroner’s report ready and wants to show you something interesting about the body herself.”
Shay spoke in my ear, making me jump. When had she sidled up next to me like that? “Something interesting on the report, eh? I wonder what that could be?”
I waved her hot breath off my shoulder. “Probably that Reggie got blasted into the netherworld by some seriously potent magical firepower.”
“Or, maybe she’ll tell us just the opposite.” Shay raised her eyebrows. “You remember what I told you about the threads, right?”
I smelled a wager. “What? Do you want to bet on it? Are you angling for a pint, too?”
Shay turned her nose up. “Beer? No thanks. When I drink, I prefer wine.”
I gagged. “Seriously? You’re a spoiled grapes girl? That explains a lot.”
She ignored my jab. “I’d be willing to wager something though.”
“Ok. I’ll bite. What?”
“If I’m right and Reginald wasn’t killed by magic, you have to apologize.”
I scoffed. “For what?”
“Seriously?” Shay blinked and her eyes widened into saucers. “It’s my first day and I’ve already stopped keeping track of all the things you should be sorry for. But I’d be willing to accept a simple acknowledgment that I was right and you were wrong.”
I’m a man—a stubborn man with real, honest-to-goodness man parts and an ego that barely fits into my skull. Apologizing doesn’t come easy, but saying no to a wager with a rookie fresh out of the ivory tower? I couldn’t say no.
Besides, I was certain I was right.
27
The morgue lay in the part of the precinct we called the dungeon. Unlike the well-lit prisoner holding cells on the main floor, the morgue, which was situated about twenty or thirty feet underground, was a cold, damp, dreary place unfit for the living.
Luckily, we used it to store dead people.
For that purpose, the dungeon was ideally designed. The temperatures in the morgue remained a good twenty or thirty degrees cooler than upstairs, which helped in keeping unpleasant fragrances to a minimum. The lack of sunlight discouraged the growth of mold, mildew, and rot, and the dampness…well, I’m not sure the dampness contributed anything of use. But it did add to the morgue’s ambience, and I’d yet to hear one of the morgue’s patrons complain about it.
Of course, no one in their right mind would enjoy spending all day among the dungeon’s cold granite walls and dark, dank passageways—especially not with the omnipresent perfume of death infusing every nook and cranny. Luckily for us, our coroner Cairny Moonshadow was not in her right mind.
I led Shay into the main room of the charnel house where we found Cairny perched over the white sheet draped remains of our good friend, Reginald Powers.
Like so many inhabitants of our great metropolis, Cairny was only part human—a fact that spoke as equally to the diversity of our city as it did to the willingness of mankind to bang anything that moves. Cairny’s better half came from one of the few races that were actually worth bedding—faeries.
Not to be confused with pixies who are small, winged little prats, faeries are tall, angelic beings who have much the same build and facial features as humans. As such, it can often be difficult to distinguish between humans and half-faeries. The only way I’ve been able to ferret out traces of fae blood in others is by looking for their aura, for lack of a better word. Faeries radiate a cerebral fragrance lacking in us regular two-legged types.
Cairny certainly emitted that aura of radiance, but in her case, it gave her the look of a fallen angel. Her huge, round eyes, long eyelashes, and ivory skin appeared celestial—until you noticed her hair. Arrow-straight and parted in a clean line down the middle of her skull, it cascaded over her ears and down her back in a waterfall of purest midnight. Combined with the often vacant, ethereal quality of her face, I couldn’t help but wonder if she possessed the ability to commune with the dead. Perhaps that’s what made her such an effective coroner.
Then again, maybe it was her dual degrees in biology and chemistry.
Today, as always, Cairny wore a jet-black, tightly fitting pantsuit that sucked in any and all errant rays of light that wandered by. She blinked at me and Shay as we joined her by the body.
“Oh… Hello, Detective Daggers.” Her voice danced to its own hidden melody.
“You sound surprised to see me, Cairny.”
“I am.”
I scratched my head. “I’m confused. Rodgers said you wanted to see us.”
“Did I say that?” Cairny gazed off into the distance. “Oh. Right. I suppose I did. Well, welcome then.”
She turned her round, moon-like eyes onto Shay and stared in silence.
“Um…hi?” said Shay.
“Hello,” responded Cairny.
I felt the need to intervene. “Cairny, this is Shay Steele. My new partner.”
“You have a new partner?” Cairny turned her inquisitive eyes back onto me. “What happened to Griggs?”
“Hadn’t you heard? He disintegrated into dust. About two weeks ago.”
She didn’t seem to get the joke. “Oh. Terribly sorry.”
I realized I hadn’t prope
rly introduced Cairny to Shay.
“Shay,” I said. “This is Cairny Moonshadow. She’s our resident coroner, and she’s—” How could I put it? A mild lunatic? Half-baked? “—uniquely qualified to do her job.”
“Oh,” said Shay, her interest piquing. “Do you have special abilities as well?”
“Why yes,” said Cairny. “I should rather think so. Mother always said I was special. I don’t think she’d lie.” Cairny blinked.
I wondered if Cairny’s mother had experienced some premonition about her daughter prior to her birth. I mean, who in the world would name their daughter Cairny unless they somehow expected she’d spend her life poking and prodding dead people?
I drummed my fingers on the exam table as the momentary pause in conversation stalled into awkward silence.
“So, um, Cairny,” I said. “You’ve got a report for us?”
Suddenly, the fog rose from her eyes and she stood a little taller. That tended to happen any time she was able to discuss her subjects.
“Yes, of course.” Cairny peeled back the white sheet, exposing Mr. Powers from the waist up. His gaping chest cavity was much the same as we’d left it. “Based on his lividity, I’d assume Mr.—” Cairny consulted a nearby clipboard. “—Powers here died somewhere between ten and two last night. But I have a feeling you’re probably more interested in what caused this rather intriguing burn wound in his torso.” Cairny tapped at the edge of the gaping hole with her finger.
“You see right through us, Cairny,” I said. “As a matter of fact, we’ve made a little wager regarding this. Haven’t we, Miss Steele?”
“It’s Detective Steele. And yes, we do have a wager. So tell us, Cairny—what, pray tell, is the cause of death?”
Coroner Moonshadow glanced between Shay and I, as if trying to decipher what sort of mystical energies bubbled between us.
I engaged my fingers in more table drumming. I was impatient. “Come on, Cairny. Spit it out. It was fire magic, wasn’t it?”
28
“It wasn’t magic.”
“Bah!” I said, throwing my hands up in exasperation.
Shay flashed a smug smile while I dealt with having victory snatched from my jaws.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Positive,” said Cairny.
One of the good things about Miss Moonshadow was that despite her mooncalfish personality, she had quite the grasp on the hard sciences. She always provided clear explanations for her diagnoses.
“So, break it down for me,” I grumbled. “If Reggie P here didn’t die from a fireball to the chest, then what exactly happened to him?”
“Well,” said Cairny. “A fireball to the chest is a fairly apt way to describe what occurred to Mr. Powers. But the fireball wasn’t fueled by magic.”
I scrunched my face up in confusion. Cairny noticed.
“Look at this,” she said. She picked up a shallow glass dish that contained a number of small dust-like particles. Some were powdery and white like talc. Others had a silvery, metallic gleam.
“You’re going to have to explain to me what I’m looking at here,” I said.
“The powdery substance is aluminum oxide, and the small metal globules are elemental iron. I found these in the chest cavity as well as in all the small burn marks within the splash zone of the main wound.”
Splash zone was an apt phrase to describe the carnage. With Reggie’s shirt removed, I could easily see the hundreds of small pockmarked burns that surrounded the gaping hole in his chest. Whatever flaming disaster had hit the guy had sent off a shower of fiery sparks.
Cairny gave me a self-satisfied smile, as if to say everything should make sense now.
“Why don’t you walk me through this step-by-step,” I said.
“Yes,” said Shay. “As if you were trying to explain things to an infant.”
I gave my partner a sour look.
“Aluminum oxide and iron are byproducts of the reaction between elemental aluminum and iron oxide, more commonly known as rust,” said Cairny. “When aluminum and iron oxide are exposed to intense heat, the result is a thermite reaction. It’s a rather remarkable process. The iron oxide acts as a source of oxygen for the flame, and so it can’t be smothered or put out once activated. Theoretically, a thermite reaction could take place underwater. More importantly, however, the reaction burns extremely hot, hot enough to melt glass or steel or even, as you can see, turn muscle and bones into nothing more than ash.”
I scratched my head. Could the dead guy’s death wound really have come from a chemical reaction? And more importantly, how was I going to couch my apology to Shay in a way that was both contrite and nonchalantly disrespectful at the same time?
“I see what you’re thinking,” said Cairny. “If the chest cavity was formed through a thermite reaction, how was it Mr. Powers sat through the entire thing without a struggle?”
That hadn’t been what I was thinking at all. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but I played along to appear smart. “Exactly. How indeed?”
“As it turns out,” said Cairny. “Mr. Powers was already dead at the time of the reaction.”
That did raise an eyebrow. Mine, in fact.
“And how do you know that?” I asked.
Cairny grasped a set of surgical forceps and stuck them into Reggie’s chest cavity. She hooked the flap of one of his internal organs and lifted.
“Look at this,” she said, beckoning with a finger.
Shay swallowed hard. My salivary glands forced a similar response.
“That’s alright,” I said. “Just tell me what you see.”
Cairny appeared to be dismayed that we didn’t share her passion for day-old corpses.
“Well,” she said as she straightened, “there’s no scorching on the inside of the lungs. Thermite may not smoke like a regular fire, but it produces an extremely virulent reaction. If Mr. Powers had been alive and breathing at the time the thermite was ignited, he would’ve inhaled numerous burning particulates which would’ve severely burned his lungs and respiratory tract. The lack of that shows me he was already dead. Besides, if he were alive during this experience, I’m fairly sure his screams would’ve attracted attention.”
“So if the fire didn’t kill him, how did Reggie die?” I asked.
“Well,” said Cairny, “it’s hard to know for sure, but based on the lack of evidence of some kind of a struggle, I’d guess he was poisoned. I can run more tests if you’d like, but it’ll take time.”
I waved off the offer. “No need for that, Cairny. I trust you.”
And I did. We could run the extra tests or petition the higher ups for authorization to bring in a real forensics mage to validate Cairny’s analysis, but I didn’t think it would be worthwhile. In all our years of working together, Cairny had never led me astray.
I drummed my fingers on the table again. If only I’d had a tiny banjo and a singing homunculus, I could’ve started my own band.
I spoke to no one in particular. “So the evidence clearly shows Reginald wasn’t murdered by magic.” I left out a silent ‘much to my chagrin.’ “But the evidence also shows Reginald was killed before the thermite fire was set? Why?”
“To set someone else up for the murder,” said Shay.
I turned to my partner. I hadn’t intended to bounce ideas off her, but she’d vocalized exactly what I’d been thinking myself.
“Right,” I said. “Whoever killed Reggie wanted to make us think fire magic was the cause of his death, knowing it would implicate that old geezer, Perspiring Blaze.”
“I think you mean Perspicacious Blaze,” said Shay.
“Whatever. Same difference. The question is—who would benefit from Blaze’s downfall?”
29
Quinto greeted us with a massive crooked grin as we returned to the main floor.
“Daggers,” he said. “You just missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“Oh, it was spectacular. Rodgers
was just about to leave for the night when this little mousy guy runs in lugging a huge banker’s box in his arms.” Quinto patted a manila folder-filled cardboard box that sat on his desk. “He was drenched with sweat and panting like a dog. He stops Rodgers and asks about you. Wants to know where he can find you. So Rodgers tells him you’re busy, but if he’s got a question he can talk to me. And he points me out.”
Quinto laughed.
“So this guy, I see his eyes follow Rodgers’ finger. Then he sees me. And he about collapses on the spot. Somehow he gets his legs under him and walks over. He’s shaking like a leaf, Daggers.” Quinto picked up the cardboard box and rattled it in his arms.
“And so he says to me, ‘Are you F-f-folton Qu-qu-quinto?’ Papers are flying everywhere. I nod. That’s when he made this sort of squeaking sound, and in one swift motion, he drops this box on the floor, turns tail, and runs. And I mean RUNS out of here. Nearly set the floor boards on fire.”
Quinto’s merriment grew until the entire office shook with his mirth. The big guy tucked the cardboard box under one arm so he could free a hand to wipe away tears of laughter that streamed from his eyes. “Man, I’ve never seen a guy in a suit run that fast. What in the world did you tell him?”
I smiled. “Oh, just if he didn’t have those files here at the precinct before nightfall that I’d send you out after him.”
Quinto took a deep breath as he wiped away the last of his tears. “Oh, that’s cruel, Daggers. Real cruel. And I’m sure you neglected to emphasize my sensitive side?”
“Naturally.”
“I guess I’m an easy villain, aren’t I?” Quinto hitched the box of files higher up underneath his arm. “Oh well. Now, it’s time to cash in. How about that brew?”
“Seriously?” I said. “You’re bringing that big box of files with you to the bar?”
“No, I’m bringing it home with me to inspect it after we leave the bar.”
I gave Quinto a sideways glance. “You’re kidding me, right?”