by Dan Willis
Contents
1. The Hard Way
2. Distance
3. The Journey
4. Links
5. Conflict of Interest
6. Clubs
7. The Legitimate Businessman
8. Plans
9. Proof and Politics
10. The Bookie
11. The Fish
12. Collusion
13. Looming Peril
14. Accidents
15. The Tip of the Iceberg
16. Patterns
17. Paths
18. The Road
19. Travel
20. The Alchemist’s Case
21. The Forum
22. The Freeway and the Dead
23. The Opening
24. Arlo Harper’s Legacy
25. Bearer Facts
26. Alchemy and Bullets
27. Extraction
28. Not in the Cards
29. Hair of the Dog
30. Armored
31. Oak Ridge
32. The Blowup
33. Medical Attention
34. The Black Chamber
35. Loose Threads
Also by Dan Willis
About the Author
Digital Edition – 2021
This version copyright © 2021 by Dan Willis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
Edited by Stephanie Osborn
Supplemental Edits by Barbara Davis
Cover by Mihaela Voicu
Published by
Runeblade Entertainment
Spanish Fork, Utah.
1
The Hard Way
Gary Symms was a mountain of a man, six feet tall and two hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle. He worked as a foreman on the south side docks, overseeing several gangs of rough men who manhandled cargo off ships, into warehouses, and then onto trucks for distribution. He wasn’t a particularly educated man, but he had an innate cleverness that ran toward cruelty. It was that, plus his prodigious size and strength, that landed him the job of foreman. Gary was smart enough to get his work done well and strong enough to keep his men in line.
He was also a murderer.
Alex Lockerby didn’t have any proof of that last one, but he had innate skills too. As he watched Gary stride off the shipyard grounds as the shift whistle blew, those instincts were telling him that Gary Symms had killed his wife.
It had been almost a week since Julia Sark had come into his office. She was a plain woman with round features, an overly large nose, and dirty blonde hair that tended toward the color of mud. When she entered Alex’s office, she also had a black eye.
Gary had given her that.
Alex clenched his fist inside the pocket of his overcoat as the man in question crossed the street and headed north, toward the capital. Most of the men who worked on the docks lived in the various slums that surrounded it, but not Gary. His position afforded him a decent income and he’d married very well, so Gary lived in a brownstone several blocks past the low-rent district.
Julia had told Alex the story, how her sister, Millie, had fallen for Gary and married him. When Julia and Millie’s father died, Gary and Millie had just moved into the brownstone, claiming it for their own. Julia hadn’t minded; she worked as a legal secretary in Trenton and only came to the city to visit her sister.
At first everything seemed fine, idyllic even, but then Julia began to notice changes in her sister. Millie would only invite Julia over during the day when Gary was at work. Several times she had bruises that she blamed on her own clumsiness. Julia became suspicious of her brother-in-law, but every time she pressed Millie on the subject, Millie would assure her everything was fine.
Then last week, Millie had called Julia during the day. She declared that she wouldn’t spend another night in the brownstone and told Julia to meet her at the ferry. Julia went, but Millie never showed. Concerned, Julia crossed the river and took a cab to the brownstone, but when she got there, Gary was home. He demanded to know where Millie had gone, but Julia knew that for the lie it was. She wanted to come in and search for Millie, but Gary refused. When she tried to push past him, he’d given her the black eye.
Julia had come to Alex the next day.
He’d tried using a finding rune, of course, but links to dead bodies were much weaker than those with the living. This case would require Alex to do things the old-fashioned way.
Alex’s first step had been to call the police. They questioned Gary, but he claimed that his wife had run out on him, just as he’d implied to Julia. He even told the cops that she was probably with her sister in Jersey. The cops had searched the house, but found no evidence of foul play, so they let the matter drop.
Alex had been following Gary for five days now. He watched the man go to and from work, stopping at a five-and-dime for breakfast, then going to his favorite bar for dinner and a drink on his way home. The previous night, he’d even stayed out drinking with a gang of his friends. It definitely wasn’t the behavior of a grieving husband whose wife had disappeared.
Alex sighed as he followed Gary through the south-side slums. It was early December, and the sun was already down. Dingy street lights cast pools of sickly yellow light onto the dirt streets, supplemented by the occasional fire barrel surrounded by forgotten men and women the depression had cast aside.
Gary walked as if he were on a brightly lit street in a good part of town. None of these ragged people would bother him and he knew it. Alex kept him in view as the slums gave way to seedy businesses. Another two blocks and Gary would reach Cohan’s Bar, his favorite dinner spot and watering hole.
Up ahead, Gary turned the corner of the block and Alex quickened his steps to keep up. He’d just turned the corner by a pawn shop when he was grabbed by the lapels of his overcoat and slammed into the side of the building. Alex grunted as the air was forced from his lungs.
“Why are you following me?” Gary demanded, leaning in to use his body weight to press Alex against the brick wall. A man like him was used to being bigger than everyone else, but Alex had him by at least an inch, though he wasn’t as bulky. “You think I didn’t see you back there?” Gary went on, trying to cow Alex with his glare. “What do you want?”
Alex gave Gary a friendly smile and pulled his hand out of his overcoat pocket.
“Alex Lockerby,” he said, holding one of his business cards up where Gary could see it. “Private investigator. Your sister-in-law hired me to find out where you dumped your wife’s body.”
It took a moment for Gary to process what Alex had said; clearly it wasn’t what he’d been expecting. When he finally put it together, he let go of Alex’s overcoat, then doubled up his fist and slugged Alex in the gut.
The air woodshed out of Alex’s lungs again and he staggered back into the wall to keep from falling to his knees.
“I’m going to teach you not to spy on your betters,” Gary growled, raising his hands into a boxer’s stance. “Then I’m going to deal with that busybody.”
“Julia,” Alex gasped, giving Gary a grin. “Her name is Julia.”
Gary just shook his head in astonishment.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he growled, moving in toward Alex.
“What’s all this about?” a
new voice interrupted.
Gary sprung back as if he’d been hit, though Alex hadn’t moved. A uniformed policemen in a blue winter overcoat had just rounded the corner. He wasn’t as tall as Alex or Gary, but he had big hands and a nose that had obviously been broken more than once.
“This fella is following me,” Gary growled, jerking his thumb at Alex. “Figured he was up to no good.”
The policeman cast an appraising eye over Alex, noting his expensive coat and shoes.
“Bill collector?” the cop said.
“Private Detective,” Alex replied, holding out another of his business cards.
The cop took the card and glanced at it before handing it back.
“I heard of you,” the cop said in an unamused voice. “You’re that hotshot that’s always in the paper, the runewright detective. Supposed to use finding magic to solve your cases.”
Alex chuckled as the cop handed back his card.
“Something like that,” he said.
“Well we don’t need any help keeping the peace around here,” the cop said, giving Alex a hard look. “You’d best be on your way.”
“All right,” Alex said, holding up his hands in acquiescence. “My finding rune is almost done anyway,” he cast a knowing look at Gary. “Then I won’t need you to find Millie.”
Gary’s eyes hardened and the side of his lip curled in a snarl. Alex was certain that if the policeman hadn’t been there, the man would have tried to murder him. Alex gave him a grin, then turned and went back around the corner the way he came.
Five minutes later, Alex opened the door from his vault to his office and walked down the narrow hall that led to his waiting room. Three doors occupied the left side of the hallway as he went. The first was to his private office, the second was a makeshift rune-writing room where his employee, Mike Fitzgerald, practiced his craft, and the last was Alex’s map room.
Opening the door to the map room, Alex found three people already gathered around the table where his enormous map of Manhattan had been permanently mounted.
“Hi’ya boss,” Sherry Knox said, giving him a sly grin. “I had a feeling you’d get it done tonight.”
Alex chuckled but didn’t respond. Sherry was a very special magical practitioner, the only one of her kind in North America, maybe even the world. She was an Auger, someone gifted with the ability to see the future.
Sometimes — when whatever power she had decided it wanted to play ball. Apparently today was one of her good days…magically speaking.
“How did it go?” the taller of the two men asked. He was several inches shorter than Alex with tan skin, dark hair, and almond-shaped eyes. He was also one of Alex’s oldest friends and his primary contact with the New York Police Department.
“You should’a seen this guy, Danny,” Alex laughed. The motion sent a twinge through his abdomen where Gary had slugged him, and he cut the laugh short with a wince. “I moved up my tail to less than half a block and I’m still surprised he made me.”
“But you planted the stone on him, right?” Mike Fitzgerald asked.
Alex looked down at the map. The table was empty except for two items, a cheap tin compass and a small, black stone. The compass was more or less in the center of the table, but the red-painted side of its needle didn’t point north, it was indicating the black rock. The stone was round and flat. Alex guessed it had come from a river somewhere, but since he bought it off a notions vender on Runewright Row, he had no way to verify that. It was one of two, a matched set that were magically linked to each other. Alex had several of the sets and had used them in the past to follow cheating husbands. All he had to do was slip one stone into the pocket of his quarry, and use a finding rune to link the second stone to a map. After that he could follow the first stone wherever it went.
“I got slugged in the gut for my trouble,” Alex said, “but I dropped it in his coat pocket.” He nodded at Danny. “Officer Hodgkins played his part perfectly. Be sure to thank him for me.”
“You got the stone on him,” Danny Pak said, indicating the map, “but did he take the bait?”
Alex grinned and waggled his eyebrows at his friend.
“Of course he did.”
“Then how come he’s having dinner in a pub?” Mike asked. “If that stone is right, he’s at Michael’s Pub, like he hasn’t a care in the world.”
“He can’t do anything yet,” Danny said. “Too many people might see him moving a body at this hour.”
“Unless he already dumped her in the harbor,” Sherry offered.
“Even in the dead of night, someone would have noticed him carrying a body eight blocks,” Alex said. “No, he hid Mimi somewhere close to his brownstone. Probably buried her, or my finding rune would have connected with her body.”
“So we just wait?” Mike said, sounding a bit let down.
“Welcome to detective work,” Danny said with a chuckle, then he looked at Sherry. “You think Marnie’s still downstairs?”
Alex’s secretary gave Danny a glowing smile and pulled a heavy thermos from under the table.
“I like to come prepared,” she said, reaching down for a stack of paper cups.
“Did you bring some sandwiches, too?” Alex asked. “I’m starving.”
“Iggy thought of that,” Sherry said, indicating a wicker basket on the sideboard that sat against the wall.
“Bless that old man,” Alex said, moving to the basket and helping himself.
The chairs that normally went with the heavy map table were kept out of the way, pushed against the back wall of the room so Alex could walk freely around the table. He grabbed one and dragged it with him as he returned to the table.
Over the next few hours, they finished off the coffee and the sandwiches while they watched the black stone. As Gary Symms moved around, the stone followed him, creeping slowly across the map.
After dinner, Gary went back to his house and remained there till well after ten. Alex was starting to worry that he hadn’t put the fear of capture into Gary, but eventually the stone moved away from the brownstone, inching along to the east.
“Looks like he’s headed toward the Capital Building,” Danny said. “That doesn’t seem a very likely hiding place for a corpse.”
“Still, you’d better get your boys moving,” Alex said, nodding at the candlestick phone sitting next to the now empty sandwich basket.
Danny stood and moved to the phone.
“Dispatch,” he said once his call went through. “This is Lieutenant Pak. I need you to contact radio car twelve. Tell them that the subject is moving east from home base in the direction of the Capital. They’re to get ready to move but hold position until I give the word.”
There was a long pause while Danny just stood with the earpiece pressed to his head, then he nodded.
“Understood,” he said, then he hung up. “We’re ready,” he reported as he set the phone down. “Any idea where he’s headed?”
Alex stared intently at the map. He wasn’t terribly familiar with that part of town, but he did recognize a large building on a corner half a block from Gary Symms’ current location.
“Isn’t this a church?” he said, indicating the space.
Danny stared at it and shrugged.
“What are you thinking?”
“What better place to hide a body than a churchyard,” Alex noted.
“Wouldn’t people notice if you dug up a cemetery?” Mike asked.
“Not if there was a fresh grave there already,” Alex pointed out.
Danny nodded along.
“He’d just have to dig a few feet down. Only enough to cover the body.”
“Don’t look now, boys,” Sherry said, pointing at the map. “But the stone just stopped at the church.”
Danny stood up, a wide smile splitting his face.
“I’ll call the boys and have them move in.”
“Give Gary ten minutes,” Alex said, rising and moving to the sideboard. He opened the botto
m of the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a stack of shot glasses. “That way, when the cops get there, he’ll already have most of the digging done.”
“A fine idea,” Mike said with a nod.
“I believe I’ll drink to that,” Danny said, accepting a tumbler full of amber liquid from Alex.
Alex arrived at his office sharp at nine the next morning. The previous night’s operation had gone according to plan: Gary had been apprehended by the police literally standing over poor Millie’s corpse. By the time Alex had gone to bed it was almost midnight, but he knew he’d have to telephone Julia first thing and he didn’t want to keep her waiting. The news had been expected, but she still burst into tears when Alex told her the news. At least her brother-in-law would get the chair for his crime.
Thank God for small favors.
The rest of Alex’s morning was taken up with bookkeeping. Mike had been taking on more involved cases using Alex’s finding rune, and Sherry had a lost engagement ring and a stolen fur coat that needed to be picked up by their rightful owners. While the others saw to the tasks that kept his agency running, Alex sat at his desk filling out the reports on a new typewriter with agonizing slowness. If the city hadn’t started requiring official forms be typewritten, Alex wouldn’t have bothered with the newfangled device. Unfortunately, he did enough business with the Central Office of Police that it was a necessity.