City of Games

by Jeff Deck

  City of Games

  The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 2

  Jeff Deck

  Contents

  Also by Jeff Deck

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Coming Summer 2019 (hopefully!)

  Acknowledgments

  Liked this book?

  The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

  Player Choice: Aether Games, Book 1

  About the Author

  Also by Jeff Deck

  City of Ports: The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 1

  The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

  Player Choice

  The Great Typo Hunt:

  Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time

  (with Benjamin D. Herson)

  Short stories featured in:

  Murder Ink 2: Sixteen More Tales of New England Newsroom Crime (Plaidswede Publishing)

  Corporate Cthulhu (Pickman’s Press)

  Robots & Artificial Intelligence Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing)

  City of Games

  The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 2

  Jeff Deck

  City of Games: The Shadow Over Portsmouth Book 2

  by Jeff Deck

  Edition 1.0. Copyright © 2019 Jeff Deck. All rights reserved.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.

  Book cover design provided by Damonza.

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  Thank you so much for supporting this work.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Created with Vellum

  For Masheri Chappelle

  “Although the knave of trumpes be the seconde carde at Mawe, yet the five-finger may commaunde both him and all the rest of the pack.”

  — Greenes Newes Both from Heaven and Hell (1593)

  “‘Aye, and did he come back?’ Mr. Salter asked.

  ‘Nay, he did not,’ replied the sailor, who was much aggrieved.”

  — “The Haunted Whorehouse of Little Island” folktale (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, circa 1890)

  1

  You would think I’m insane to walk away from this beautiful, alien, golden city in a bubble.

  Yeah, I know: putting Grace Stone and her cronies behind bars isn’t going to resurrect you. But I can admit by now that closing this case is no longer for you. I need to see the look on Stone’s face the moment that I destroy her. If that’s the bad old anger side of me, then so be it. But it feels more like an appetite for justice, the god Sol claimed I worship.

  Speaking of Sol, maybe I’m a bad friend for not sticking around and cheering him on during his... initiation. Truth is, I feel queasy and doubtful about the whole thing. But I am the one who pushed him in this direction in the first place. He raises his eyebrows at me and I look away.

  “Come on, Divya,” says Nadia Chopin, catching up to me. “You don’t have to leave right this second—isn’t vengeance best served cold?”

  “Forget it, Nadia,” Durmaz 1N says, interceding before Nadia can physically block me from entering the sphere to go back home. “You’ve got Sol’s implanting to oversee. Allard will come around on her own.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “When the time is right, I’ll gladly accept a full tour of … this.” I clasp Sol’s shoulder and add, “If this ends up feeling wrong at all, in any way, don’t let them put the thing in your wrist. Got it?”

  He gives me a tight smile. “I’m an adult, Divya. Just like you. See you on the flipside.”

  “Just … let me give you a few names to work on, at least,” Nadia says. “To help your crusade against the council. Jill Haven and Eddie Barndollar were two supposed overdoses—look into their cases. And one more: Hector Ferreira disappeared weeks ago, and I’m fearing the worst. Please, Divya.”

  “Got it.”

  My steps take me back to the sphere. The guards let me pass with only a glance. Then I’m floating through the low gravity of this strange temple of “the spirit of water” and I cross back through the Port to old Earth summer night.

  It’s anticlimactic to be back on familiar sand with familiar sea smells tickling my nostrils. The only souvenir I have from Stroyer’s Axle is the knowledge that Councilor Stone killed you, and I don’t even have evidence to back up this assertion.

  Nadia’s right: I’ll need proof that Stone and the other councilors killed someone. If they’ve really left a trail of cultist bodies, as Nadia claims, then I should be able to find an instance where they fucked up. Cover-ups are fragile things—the larger they get, the more people they involve, and the more likely they crumble at a tender poke.

  I’ll start with the two cultist death cases marked as drug overdoses, Haven and Barndollar. Ferreira being a missing person case, that’d require a different approach, and less relevant to my own goals, but maybe I’ll see what I can find about that guy too.

  Prince, Lewis, Gomez. Those were the ones Nadia named as dirty cops.

  I need a good cop to help me from the inside. Milly Fragonard is the first one who comes to mind. She may not be happy with me, but she’s a woman of honor. She saw how I fought and subdued Evil Allard—Benazir—that horrible night at the station. She knows I’m on the side of the angels now, even if my wings are featherless and gnarled.

  It should be too late to bother her at her home, if she’s even at home rather than on duty. But I’m not the most considerate person around.

  The cult’s fisherman/lookout calls out to me as I’m leaving the shore: “Hey. Why you back by yourself?”

  I take a deep breath. It’s easier to control my irritation when I realize I’m talking to a teenage girl. Just a kid following orders.

  “Don’t worry, they’re all fine,” I tell her. “I just didn’t want to stick around for the initiation party.”

  “Oh. Too bad.” She puts the fishing pole down and holds up her wrist to show me the bulge there. “You gotta get one of these things. The voice you’ll hear … it’s amazing. You’ll learn so much.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, starting back up the path, then I stop. “The—voice? What voice?”

  The girl hesitates. Her eyes are shining. “Oh, you know. The voice of the multiverse. It’s—it tells you when a Port is nearby.”

  “I thought the thing just vibrated,” I say.

  She nods quickly. “Right. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Don’t… don’t trip, Detective Allard. It’s dark on the path.”

  Officer Milly Fragonard’s house is dark. Four copies of the Portsmouth Porthole lie on her doorstep, all different dates. I knock anyway, and nothing happens.

  Hm.

  I guess everyone’s entitled to a vacation. But the timing seems suspicious.

  Regardless, I’m not about to break into the poor woman’s house. I just got out of jail, and if I’m going to get Milly’s help, a B&E won’t be the key to her heart. I scoop up today’s edition of the Porthole and take it with me.

  I drive back to the Portsmouth community parking lot, and of course the fucking summer tourists have jammed all the spaces. Bravo, City Council; at least they’re pumping in plen
ty of blood money. I head over to the South End and find a spot in one of the tiny, narrow residential streets.

  Walking around the neighborhood feels like stepping back in time to the 1700s, when men were men and slaves were slaves. The houses are within spitting distance of Prescott Park, and spit these people do whenever the artsy folks dare to host a concert in the park. Even now I can see a couple of decibel meters perched in front windows, awaiting the next “assault” from a folk singer’s tunes.

  I go home.

  The landlord, Piscataqua Savings Bank, patched up the door to my apartment for me while I was in jail. I chuckle now, thinking about how frantic I was to retrieve another outfit on that crazy night. My twin, my clone, had stolen the clothes right off me while I was unconscious.

  I pull out some lettuce and tomatoes and carrots I picked up earlier today and make a salad. I have a renewed appreciation for fresh produce after my stay in “The Rock.” I sit at my little kitchen table and open the Porthole to catch up on what I’ve been missing.

  The huge headline catches me off guard. Half-chewed salad drops back into the bowl.

  “COP CONDUCT QUESTIONED” is the first thing I see. Below, the subhed reads “Fragonard accused of manipulating widower to get in will.”

  Old proud and tall Milly, trying to trick some old sap out of his money? I’d sooner believe an extradimensional gate that could create clones of people than—well. I pick up the Porthole.

  “AMELIA JONES, ajones@portsmouthporthole.com — New allegations rocked the Portsmouth Police Department yesterday against Officer Millicent Fragonard, a three-year member of the force. Fragonard stands accused of abusing her police powers by improperly insinuating herself into the life of elderly local resident and multimillionaire Scott Shaughnessy, to the point of working with a lawyer to be written into his will.

  Shaughnessy’s adult children, Melanie Dow and Kit Shaughnessy, have been written out of the latest edition of the will. They are livid over the situation, according to their lawyer, Sandy Grieg.

  “Mrs. Dow and [the younger] Mr. Shaughnessy cannot believe that Officer Fragonard was allowed to take advantage of an elderly, dementia-affected man in this manner,” Attorney Grieg said. “We have built a case to clearly show the Portsmouth Police Department was aware of Fragonard’s actions for weeks and did nothing to intervene. This is an outrageous violation of duty and we will hold the entire department accountable. We will get justice for my clients’ father.”

  The Porthole attempted to reach Scott Shaughnessy for comment, but only received the following reply via telephone: “Take a boat out and sink it.”

  The Porthole also attempted to reach Fragonard for comment but was unable to do so.”

  No wonder Milly took off on vacation. I grimace in sympathy at the crushing effect of bad press. I mean, it’s impossible that these charges are true.

  Right?

  Shaughnessy is more than just a “local resident and multimillionaire.” He’s a former city councilor, but what he’s famous for is his house—out on the channel, just off the shore of the South End. Round Island is a tiny piece of real estate in Portsmouth Harbor, with a large house containing its sole population of one. Every couple of years, some reporter rows out to the island to get a few fluff quotes from Shaughnessy and take pictures of the pretty old manse.

  I had no idea he was demented. Though come to think of it, I haven’t seen one of those perennial Round Island articles in a while. Less of a feel-good piece if it’s about a mentally ill hermit instead of a quirky gent of leisure. I wonder how long the disease lurked under the surface.

  It’s possible I simply never knew this side of Milly Fragonard: a foul manipulator that would stoop to robbing an addled old man of his millions. You concealed a crucial part of yourself from me, after all. While I busted speeders or ticketed some schmo for pissing in an alley, you were gallivanting with the beautiful brown folk of Stroyer’s Axle. Or how about Ethan Jeong, who pretended to be my friend until he conspired in my sham arrest for the crimes Benazir committed.

  Everyone wears a closetful of masks. Even me.

  I scan the rest of the article. Apparently Milly “worked” on Shaughnessy for weeks. She’d take him ashore on his ferry and escort him to have drinks and play poker and blackjack at Hampton Beach on multiple occasions. She even drove him all the way down to Foxwoods Casino down in Connecticut one weekend.

  None of this sounds remotely like the Milly Fragonard I know.

  I bolt down the rest of my dinner and then go back outside, restless with new thoughts and worries. I walk by tranquil Prescott Park and then along the South End waterfront until I reach the dock at the lobster pound. From there, I have a not-so-clear view of Round Island. Every window of Shaughnessy’s mansion is ablaze with light.

  I sit on the dock. I was banking on Milly to be one of the definitively uncorrupted cops in the Portsmouth PD, but if all this Shaughnessy stuff is true, that blows my plan to hell. Well, either way it’s blown, isn’t it? Milly could be innocent, but she’s still not here, and may not even want to come back.

  Assuming she left of her own will.

  Hm.

  I could lean on someone else instead for help—I’m pretty sure Officer Rick McLaren wouldn’t stand for being a pet of the city council—but now finding justice for you is no longer my only mission. Maybe it’s not even my primary mission, if Milly’s gotten herself into danger. I really ought to rank the living over the dead.

  It’s tough to survive as a good cop with compromised colleagues. If Lewis and Gomez and Prince were messing with the Tenacious Trainer kids—what would stop from framing their annoyingly upright fellow officer Fragonard? Especially if she started asking inconvenient questions?

  I half-consider commandeering a rowboat and paying a late-night visit to the demented exile of Round Island. But no, the last time I went haring off at night didn’t end well for me. I’ll need a full night’s sleep and a full case of marbles to be any use to Milly—or to affirm her guilt for myself.

  2

  I wake to the sound of shrill screaming.

  Gradually, I calm as I realize it’s my door buzzer. I haven’t had someone come to my door in a long time. I pull some shorts on and hesitate at the panel by the front door. No way am I gonna buzz somebody in without seeing who it is first.

  The buzzer goes off again. I unlock my beat-up door and pad down the long hallway stairs to the door to Pleasant Street. I peer through the little window and see the broad and unwelcome face of Detective Ben Ulrich squinting back at me. For once, he’s not throwing me a smirk. He looks pale and worried.

  Still, I suck on my middle finger and show him the glistening digit.

  “Allard, please,” Ulrich says. “It’s about Milly Fragonard.”

  I relent and pull the bolt. Ulrich hulks over me in the unforgiving morning sunlight, dressed for duty in a suitcoat and tie, his badge blinding me. The bulge in his jacket gives away his Sig.

  “What do you know?” I ask without preamble.

  “Nothing,” he says. “This is gonna be hard for you to believe, Allard, but I need your help. I hardly believe it either. But I—listen, can I come in and have some iced coffee or what? It’s hot as balls out here.”

  I’ve got more than a little trepidation about my former colleague. Last I saw Detective Ulrich, he was blaming me for bringing blood and death into the Portsmouth Police Department. And he wasn’t entirely wrong, either.

  “Iced coffee?” I say finally. “Do I look like Breaking New Grounds to you? I’ll give you instant crap and you can put a mildewed ice cube in it.”

  “Done,” Ulrich says. I stand aside to let him in. He blinks in the cool dimness and ascends the stairs. He pauses to inspect the taped-and-cardboarded-up door to my apartment but makes no comment.

  I present my apartment to him with a sarcastic flourish. I see the old smirk threatening to emerge on Ulrich’s face as he eyes my cheap furniture and the piles of clutter in the corners. Then h
e looks up at the small hatch in the ceiling, some twenty feet above our heads. “Where does that go?”

  I shrug. “Just a quirk of this old building. An attic, I guess.”

  “Could be a security risk. What if the attic connects to neighboring units?”

  “The kitchen’s this way,” I say, steering him to the rear of the apartment. I’m unconcerned about someone dropping into my place like a cat burglar in a bad action movie. If Ulrich really cares about home security, he could have a legitimate beef with the low rooftop accessible from my kitchen and bathroom windows. But he says nothing about the roof, and I get the coffee going.

  “You’ve seen the papers,” Ulrich says.

  “Not this morning’s,” I say, “but yes. Defrauding a crazy old man doesn’t sound like something Milly would do. Ever.”

  “I agree,” he says. He pulls a folded-up newspaper from his jacket and smooths it out on my kitchen table. “This is the latest.”

  I give it only a glance. The Porthole’s top headline is WIDOWER’S HEIRS TO SUE PD.