Unperfect Souls

7

The early-morning cold remained, the sky a stark white with the threat of snow. When I’d arrived home the previous night, I spent the evening outlining research ideas for Shay’s dog problem. Which, of course, led all too easily to late-night Internet surfing on topics that had nothing to do with hellhounds. Which, more of course, I should have known would lead to an early-morning phone call from Murdock asking me to meet him since I had barely gotten any sleep. He told me to wear clothes and boots I didn’t care about, so I wore the oldest pair of jeans I owned and an extra layer of sweatshirt.

I walked the three blocks to the location Murdock gave me. Trucks barreled down Fargo Street, whipping sand into the air. Near the corner of Cypher Street, large blue utility vans emblazoned with MASSACHUSETTS WATER RESOURCES AUTHORITY on the side blocked part of the intersection. MWRA workers placed cones and portable metal barricades around an open manhole. Wearing jeans and an old Red Sox jacket, Murdock stared into the hole in the street. I assumed he had borrowed the jacket from one of his brothers because I could not imagine Murdock keeping a stained piece of clothing. His new casual attire was amusing me.

A sewer worker banged on something in the hole below us. “Please tell me you asked me to dress like this because we’re going hiking,” I said.

He chuckled silently. “No such luck. The MWRA gave us an idea of where the body at the headworks might have gone into the system based on the time on the broken watch. Turns out the tunnel he came out of has only two feeder pipes. This is where they meet.”

I slouched. “We’re going in the sewer.”

“Yep. It’s a possible crime scene.”

The worker banged some more. “What’s he doing?” I asked.

“Scaring away the rats.”

“Great.”

Joe burst into the air in front of the detail officer directing traffic. The guy ducked like a giant insect was attacking him. “Am I too late? Did I miss anything?” Joe asked.

Murdock watched him flutter around the manhole. “Just in time, Joe.”

Joe showing up at two different crime scenes was a little too coincidental. “How the hell did you reach him? I can’t get him to show up anywhere on time.”

Murdock withdrew a small clear bottle from his pocket. Motes of yellow light danced inside. “He gave me a bunch of these.”

Glow bees. They were concentrations of essence that absorb voice sounds. Messages became imprinted on the essence, which homed in on the recipient when released. They worked best with strong body signatures—like the fey had—and since Murdock’s signature was hyped enough to create a body shield, a glow bee would be easy for him to use. Humans loved to play with them although cell phones worked a lot faster. The sewer worker climbed out. Murdock gestured. “After you.”

I shook my head. “I believe it’s your case, Detective. I’m a consultant here.”

Murdock placed one foot on the ladder. Joe zipped in ahead of him. The worker handed me a flashlight, and I followed them down. A cast-iron pipe ran through a low, square tunnel. The pipe took up most of the space, and we crouched against a brick wall. A dull odor filled the air, not overwhelming, the tang of chemicals and dankness. “It doesn’t smell as bad as I thought,” I said.

Murdock swung his own flashlight toward the end of the tunnel. “That’s because this part’s sealed. The catch basin is up that way.”

“Excuse me while I get ahead!” Joe said. His squeal of laughter trailed down the tunnel as the pink glow of his wings dwindled into the distance.

Murdock shimmied sideways along the pipe. I flicked the beam of my light at his feet, then behind me. I’m not a fan of rats sneaking up on me. “Don’t you guys have crime-scene people to do this?”

Murdock cleared his throat. “Short-staffed. They said they don’t look for crime scenes, they investigate them. Besides, they can’t do what you do.”

True. When I climbed down the ladder, my sensing ability got immediate hits, mostly dwarves, several anomalous ones that meant solitaries, and the distinctive signature of the Dead. The Dead felt different than the living. Their signatures had a dulled aspect to them that distinguished them from living ones. “Too many to sort in this area.”

Murdock pushed forward. “I don’t even want to think about so many people down here.”

The body signatures faded the farther we moved from the manhole. Homeless squats appeared under the pipes, faint shimmers of essence indicating they had been used a while ago. The distant sound of water reached my ears at the same time as the stench that I expected to find in a sewer. Joe’s pink essence appeared and reappeared, closer now. He was either popping in and out of sight or passing in front of an opening.

“I’m down to five body signatures, Murdock. Two dwarves, a Dead fairy, a solitary I don’t recognize and, I’m not sure, but I think it might be a Dead human.”

“Human? I thought there were no humans in Faerie,” he said.

I ducked my head under a ceiling beam. “No humans came here from Faerie during Convergence. That’s different. There were humans in Faerie who lived and died. Whoever I’m sensing died as a human in Faerie.”

Murdock stopped. “We’re here.”

The pipe continued a few more feet, the end suspended over a wide catch basin filled with water. A dozen feet across it, another pipe entered from the opposite direction. Fetid water trickled out of both pipes. Joe circled in the air, examining the debris floating in the water. Murdock would have killed me if I knocked him into it, no matter how accidentally. I was very tempted, I was.

“See anything, Joe?” Murdock asked.

His eyes glowed with excitement. “It’s essence soup.”

Essences smeared into each other, reds and yellows dominating with streaks of blue and green. Here and there, the pale essence of the Dead twisted on cast-off garments and, yes, indications of body fluids. My head buzzed with the mess, the dark mass pulsing against my skull.

A wet, hollow sound filled the air with a rumble and a rush. I grabbed Murdock’s sleeve. “Better step back.”

We retreated a few feet into the tunnel as a gout of black-slimed water gushed out of the pipe. As if triggered by its companion, more water spewed from the opposite pipe. The pipe continued dropping a steady stream after the nearer one slackened. The catch basin sloshed as water fell and kicked up debris from the bottom. The water level rose and spilled into a culvert on one wall between the two pipes. The rancid smell of sewage and rotten garbage thickened. The stench had a texture to it that clung to the back of the throat and made it impossible not to gag.

In the midst of the swirls of essence, something pale floated, a void of essence. It rolled up and sank, then rose again. Wet hair spread across the surface, spreading the weight of the thing it was attached to. It bobbed, and dead white eyes stared up at us.

“Jesus,” Murdock muttered as he played the flashlight on the face.

“That is one big head,” Joe said.

The body found at the headworks was one of the Dead. This head, however, didn’t have the signature of one of the Dead. It rolled, its face rising out of the water.

“That’s not the head we were looking for,” Murdock said.

“I think we just found Zev’s friend Sekka,” I said.