Unquiet Dreams

Chapter 2

I moved several newspapers off Murdock’s passenger seat and got in his car. The man is fastidious about his personal appearance but has slob tendencies that manifest themselves in any vehicle he happens to drive. When the heat came on, I detected the faint whiff of chicken wings.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Down Harbor Street,” he said.

“Harbor? You got pulled off a murder scene for a dead body in the Tangle?”

He nodded. “Code came in possible high profile. We need to get in and assess before the Guild shows up.”

If the Weird is the ass end of Boston neighborhoods, the Tangle is the ass end of the Weird. The place gets its name from the chaotic network of streets that twist around each other, a confusing interplay of real and not-so-real lanes and buildings. To explain Boston’s oddly laid-out streets, an urban legend claims they’re paved over cow paths. In the Tangle, the cows apparently were drunk as hell.

Even I admit that it’s a rough place. It’s no wonder the place makes the news. Drugs and the more esoteric types of body trades are the primary commercial ventures. Gangs rule the streets. Spellcasters openly offer their services for questionable enterprises. An inordinate number of people go missing, or at least were often last seen alive there.

If the Guild tends to ignore the happenings in the Weird, it positively pretends the Tangle doesn’t even exist. While I’m no longer the Guild’s biggest fan, they do have a point. Lots of people wish the Tangle didn’t exist. But it does, so there’s no excuse to let what goes on there, go on. And, naturally, the Guild only gets involved if someone important gets caught up.

We pulled onto Harbor Street, not technically the Tangle, but close enough. Murdock just parked in the middle of the street. Police privilege. He wasn’t the first. Two squad cars were already on scene, and an officer was frantically unraveling crime scene tape in a wide arc in front of a building thirty feet away. He looked pale, a little green around the gills even.

We stepped out of the car into more cold. I looked up and saw the southern edge of the weather spell ripple and shift as the last of it evaporated in the morning sun. We walked toward the cordoned-off storefront, two large plate-glass windows with slogans like HELP US, HELP YOU and WE RISE ONLY TOGETHER. A multihued sign above the door said UNITY.

The signs reminded me that not everyone was willing to abandon the Weird. Just like I had come to care about the people down here, others did, too. Along with the sinners, a few hardy saints marched down here, struggling to make a difference. Some of them try to persuade people off the paths they have chosen. Some just hand out bandages to get someone through the day. At best, they make tiny dents. At worst, they get themselves caught up in the shifting alliances. I figured that’s what we were probably walking into now, someone who had poked their nose in a little too deep.

We ducked the tape, and the smell hit me immediately. “Damn, Murdock, I can sense a lot of blood from here. It’s an elf.”

Two more officers stood just inside the door. One of them seemed to be concentrating on keeping his jaw clamped shut. The other one nodded at us. “Hope you haven’t had breakfast.”

Not a good sign. The police see a lot, especially in rougher neighborhoods. They deal with most of it with gallows humor. When they openly acknowledge the severity of a murder scene, it is definitely not a good sign.

“That bad?” asked Murdock.

“Worse,” said the officer. He pointed inside. “Nine-one-one call came from a phone in the front room. Door was unlocked when we got here. No one here but the victim.”

Murdock nodded. It is a time-honored tradition to remain anonymous in the Weird. Murdock gave me a quick look and stepped inside. I followed, already tamping down my senses to deaden the scent of blood.

The front room spanned the width of the building and ran back about thirty feet. Several groupings of cast-off furniture filled the near section, behind those was a Ping-Pong table, and behind that were three old metal desks. The walls were painted a jarringly vibrant shade of yellow and covered with posters proclaiming the virtues of friendship, cooperation, and racial harmony. The cynic in me couldn’t help snorting. Not that it wasn’t all well-intentioned. But this close to the Tangle, it smacked of naïveté.

Two archways stood on opposite sides of the back wall. “The left side,” I said to Murdock. The stench was unavoidable.

Murdock went first. He stopped in the archway, blocking my view. “Sweet mother of God,” he whispered. He turned away from the door with his eyes closed. I was not going to like it. I stepped into the archway and froze.

Half of my brain began objectively assessing what I was seeing. The other half was screaming. The room was long and narrow, no windows, with a closed door at the rear. A desk had been flipped forward to my right. Everything that had been on it had scattered to the floor. Four of the five chairs in the room were either upturned or broken. The fifth was embedded in the back wall. Every conceivable surface was sprayed with blood. Floors. Walls. Ceiling. At my feet lay a left hand with the lower half of a forearm attached. I could see a right arm under one of the chairs. I assumed a separate bloody mangle near the desk was the lower extremities. Gobbets of body organs appeared to be smeared everywhere. To the right and about eight feet up, a head peered out of a bloody crater in the wall. The face had been flattened. Other than my ability to sense its essence, the only remaining clue to race of the individual was a long, pointed ear that was sticking straight out in the wrong direction.

I closed my eyes. I could hear Murdock breathing through his mouth. If I was going to help, I had to use my nose. The scent of blood overwhelmed, the elf essence coating everything. Two things jumped out at me, though. At least one troll had spent a lot of time in the room, and I could sense a second. I moved forward a little.

“Don’t touch anything,” Murdock said. I nodded. Contaminating a crime scene like this would not be looked on tolerantly by anyone.

I could sense fear. The feeling is more intuitive than technical. I’m not a dog. But sometimes strong emotion seems to color how essence feels to me, like salt or pepper on a steak. The odd thing was, I wasn’t sensing the fear from the elf, which suggested to me that whatever happened to him was unexpected. He literally hadn’t seen it coming. But fear permeated the place, a fear intense enough to announce the presence of at least one human normal. That’s the one thing you can always sense from a human.

I turned away from the carnage. “We should get in that back room.”

Murdock led the way back to the front door. “How long ago did this call go out on the wire?” he asked the same officer by the door.

He looked at his watch. “Probably ten minutes or so.”

Murdock looked at me. “We don’t have much time. Let’s go.” We broke into a jog out the door, ducked under the tape again, and made our way to a narrow back alley. For this part of the neighborhood, the alley was surprisingly clean. Probably some do-gooder project. The back door to the building was the self-closing type, but wasn’t quite closed. Murdock pulled out his gun.

I don’t carry a gun. Never did. Once I didn’t need to with all the other abilities I had. Now I avoid them because the metal content messes up whatever little ability I do have. I flattened myself against the wall behind Murdock. He stretched forward and tugged quickly at the door handle, simultaneously pulling back into firing stance. The door swung open, briefly revealed a darkened room, then began to close. Murdock grabbed it before it could lock. He scuttled across the face of the door, pulling it open as he moved to the opposite side. No sounds came out. No gunfire, which was good, and no explosive shot of essence, which was even better. Neither of us was equipped to deal with that. I ducked my head into the opening and back.

“Empty,” I mouthed to him.

Gun forward, Murdock leaped into the room to the opposite side again. I could picture him inside, the two of us pressed against the wall between us. I waited a long two seconds, listening. “Clear,” he called out.

I walked in to find Murdock holstering his gun. He kept the holster open.

The back room was mainly storage, some stacked chairs and folding tables, boxes and filing cabinets, and some standard office equipment: a fax machine, a photocopier, and some kind of large-size printer. Faint levels of essence from all species permeated the space, in tribute to the apparent ethic of the place. Given that, the strong register of troll and human stood out. The troll was definitely the same one I had sensed in the office space. The human was strong enough to be identifiable, but with the mess in the other room, I couldn’t tell if the fear I had felt there was from the same person.

“I’d say someone hid in here while the action in the other room went on. When everything went down, they ran out the back door,” said Murdock.

Made sense to me. It would explain why the inside door was closed and the back door was open. Someone was in too much of hurry to worry about securing the door.

Murdock’s two-way squawked. It was only one word, so I understood it. “Company.”

Murdock looked around. “Did you touch anything?”

“Okay, second time you’ve done that. I’m not an amateur,” I said.

“Sorry. Guild’s here. Let’s go.” He had the good sense to look chagrined. I let it pass, because at the least it showed why I liked working with him. Murdock paid attention to details. We backed out of the room and left the door exactly how we found it. As we walked back up the building, I paused. More troll essence. It led off to the right, into the Tangle. It didn’t surprise me. If I were a troll and needed to blend in with the scenery fast, that’s where I’d go.

When we reached the front of the building, the activity level had increased dramatically in a short period of time. Two more police cars, an EMT van, the medical examiner’s car, a Boston morgue wagon and a Guild one, and a black town car now cluttered the street. The interesting action was occurring at the front door, where several people were arguing.

As we arrived, the officer we had left at the door was blocking the entrance, preventing people from getting inside, including one very attractive and angry fairy. The officer looked relieved when he saw us. “Here he is now, ma’am. Lieutenant Detective Murdock is ranking officer. Sir, this is Community Liaison Officer macNeve.”

“We’ve met,” said Murdock.

Keeva macNeve spun on her heel to face us in full intimidation mode. She had her wings unveiled and shot a little essence into them to make the silvery gossamer flicker yellow and white. All five-foot-eight of her projected anger and authority. I love Keeva in a lather. She’s very good at it. She even somehow gets her mop of red hair to undulate. And to her credit, it works most of the time to get her what she wants.

“You two. I should have guessed,” she said.

“Hi, Keeva,” I said. “You’re up early. New job keeping you on your toes?” Keeva and I used to work together at the Guild. When I say “work together,” I mean we worked in the same general geographic area trying not to pummel each other as we solved cases. That’s just as much a comment on my behavior as on hers. She recently got promoted to Community Liaison Officer for Community Affairs due to a rather sudden vacancy. It’s a polite title. Internally at the Guild, the job is really Chief of Investigations.

“We have a major situation here, Connor. This is a Guild case.”

“We were just securing the scene,” said Murdock.

“Did you touch anything?” Keeva asked him. I resisted the urge to smirk.

Murdock smiled tightly. “No, ma’am. Would you like to fill us in?”

“No,” she said. She turned back to the officer. “Move.” He looked at Murdock, who nodded. Bowing politely, he stepped aside, and Keeva strode through the door, followed by a rather sallow-skinned druid that I guessed was the Guild coroner.

“Left-hand door,” I called out. Through the plate glass, we watched them cross the room and walk directly to the archway. The coroner backed out immediately, even more sickly colored if that were possible, and bolted through the front door. He made sounds behind his vehicle that we all tried to ignore out of professional courtesy as well as our own need not to join him. I could only guess he hadn’t been on the job very long. After several moments, Keeva reappeared and paused at the archway as she obviously pulled herself together. She lifted her head and came outside.

“You could have warned me,” she said. I have to give her credit; she still looked more angry than ill.

I feigned innocence. “You seemed in a rush.”

“My people will be here momentarily. You need to pull everyone out,” Keeva said. The coroner returned from behind the car with his kit over his shoulder.

For someone just arriving, she seemed too much in a hurry to get rid of us. “Who do you think the victim is, Keeva?”

She gave me a long tense look, then relaxed. “You’ll know soon enough. It’s Alvud Kruge.”

That gave me a “whoa” moment. If someone told me I would find an elf with international diplomatic ties smeared across the back room of a storefront on the edge of the Tangle, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. My gaze went up to the sign above the storefront. Unity. Of course, he would be here. Alvud Kruge has been an advocate for peace for decades, often at odds with his own people in the Teutonic Consortium back in Germany. Had been. He’d even been on the board of directors at the Boston Guildhouse, something that also didn’t endear him to his compatriots.

Murdock rubbed his eyes. “God, I’ve had better mornings.”

“How did you know it was him?” I asked.

Keeva gazed at me without speaking for a long moment. I’ve known her a long time. That look means either she’s weighing how much she wants to share or how much she’s going to lie. “Kruge was a Guild director. His addresses get flagged for security. You know that, Connor.”

That was true. Guild members have a lot of enemies for one reason or another. The higher up in the food chain you go, the more people you have waiting to knock you down. Above all else, the Guildhouse protects its own. Even though they had the ill grace to kick me out when I was down, they still provided me a fair amount of security. Nothing flashy, but enough to let me sleep at night in my own bed in my own apartment without worrying about spells in the dark. As head of the crime unit, Keeva was at the top of the contact list for anything associated with Guild execs. So she went for the plausible. Nothing I could call her on. Yet. But that hesitation before answering intrigued me. As usual with her, more than the obvious was probably going on. I decided to play on her side for the moment.

“Someone used a weather spell last night. It extended almost from this exact location back up to Oh No,” I said.

Keeva looked up at the sky. The sun was fully up, and any trace of the essence haze I had seen earlier was gone.

“I thought the cold might be related. Did you notice anything else?” She even sounded like she was treating me like a colleague. While she’s not given to admitting inadequacies, Keeva knows that druids have higher sensitivity to more types of essence than fairies, even a member of the Danann clan like her. Dananns may be some of the most powerful beings on the planet, but they still can’t find a dwarf in a tunnel without a flashlight.

It was an easy thing to share for now. Her druid coroner would tell her the same thing later anyway. “Some conflicting troll and human essence in the back room and the alley. I’m getting multispecies hits everywhere. No one I recognized.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How did you get here so fast? It may be early for me, but I know damn well you don’t usually roll out of bed until noon.”

“Murdock called me in on another murder nearby when this call came in,” I said.

“It’s a kid. Looks like a fairy might have dropped him,” Murdock said.

Keeva nodded absently as she examined the front door. She might have heard Murdock, she might not have. Boston P.D. calls were not that interesting to her or the Guild. She reached out and held the doorknob. It’s a little Danann trick. What they cannot always perceive with their eyes and nose, they can sometimes do by touch. She moved her hand to the doorjamb, then back to the knob. Her brow creased.

“Are you getting something?” I asked.

She looked up. “Hmm? I’ll read your report when it gets sent over, Detective. If you’re only at ‘might-have-dropped,’ it doesn’t sound like something the Guild needs to take. Kruge’s going to suck up a lot of resources.”

Murdock and I exchanged knowing looks. No surprises. Even if the Weird wasn’t involved, Kruge would have taken precedence. It’s the way of the world. His death was going to make international headlines. The kid up the street might make a quick mention on the early news, but after that it would be twenty-four-hour Kruge.

I could hear a low-level hum that was beginning to build. I knew that sound. Keeva and I both looked up, but no one else did yet. They’d catch it in a moment. The hum turned into a whirring noise, and six fairies came into view above us. A Guild security unit. Gods, I miss showing up with them. All tricked out in black leather, chrome helmets, and white energy pulsating in their wings. People get out of the way when they show up. Even cops. Like the cops standing next to us who sidled down to the sidewalk. It only takes “accidentally” getting hit once with a little essence bolt to get the message that you don’t mess with them. They landed in a loose circle around me, Keeva, and Murdock. I could feel Murdock give off one of his odd essence surges.

“It’s fine, guys,” Keeva said to them. “They were just leaving.” She looked at me with a cocked eyebrow.

I smiled. “It was nice seeing you, too, Keeva.”

“We both have work to do, Connor,” she said and walked back into the building.

The security unit stepped in a little closer. “Relax. We’re going,” I said.

Now came the pissing-game part. They blocked our way to the car, but without even asking Murdock, I knew we were not going to walk around them. With a reasonable look on my face, I stepped up on them and gestured politely with my hands that we wanted to pass. They in turn did not respond immediately to make us think they weren’t going to move. Then two of them stepped apart with barely enough room to walk between them. Murdock and I made sure to rub our shoulders against them as we passed through the gap. We didn’t look back as we went to the car, but as we got in, we almost simultaneously stared back at them. I wasn’t surprised to see all six turned in our direction. Murdock started up the car and slowly drove forward. He reached the crime scene tape and drove through it. The entire time we all stared at each other, which was more difficult for Murdock and me since we couldn’t make eye contact through those chrome helmets. This is how grown men maintain their dignity without breaking noses. It’s silly and important, and most women never understand it. We turned onto Summer Street and headed back to Old Northern.

“I hate those guys,” Murdock said.

“Yeah, I wish I had them as my crew, too,” I said.

Murdock allowed himself a smile. “She’s got her hands full with that. It looks interesting, but it’s going to end up all press conferences.”

That’s Murdock right there. He’s a smart guy who wants to stay a cop. Not a police officer. Not a department flunky. A cop. Cops enforce the law and solve crimes. Everything else is bull to guys like him.

I like the attitude, but I have to confess to a certain ambivalence. Most of us get into law enforcement because we want to make the world a better place. I could have gone the scholar route and run with the Druidic College crowd. Or the diplomatic route and gone to work for the Seelie Court. But I chose the Ward Guild because it gets to do stuff that produces results you can see. And, I have to admit, you sometimes get your picture in the paper. I miss the glory. I’ve been too busy working on purging my old arrogance to give up my vanity.

We pulled up at the first murder scene. The body had been removed, and the medical examiner had left. Just a couple of beat officers were wandering the field taking notes. Murdock turned the car around and drove up to the Avenue.

“Looks like I’ve got paperwork to start. What angle do you want to take?” Murdock asked.

I considered for a moment. We really didn’t have much to go on. Multiple unknown essences and a possible gang connection. “I think I’ll start with the gang angle, see if anyone knew of anything going down last night.”

He nodded. “I’ll set you up with some profile. I’m going to try and ID the kid and work his associates, check a few sources.”

Murdock turned down Sleeper Street. I was glad I didn’t have to ask him outright for a ride. Cabs don’t like to pick people up down near the Tangle, and even if I expensed it, the fare would cut into my meager cash flow until the reimbursement check came in. Boston P.D. accounting is wicked slow.

I got out of the car. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”

“Yep,” Murdock said and pulled away. He never says good-bye, not even on the phone.

I let myself into my building and felt the security spell as I passed inside. It’s one of the disability benefits from the Guild. Since I lost my abilities in the line of duty, they at least had the decency to provide some protections. Small compensation for kicking me out of my job, but at least I have some chance against some idiot who might come looking for revenge. I can open or close the door with a vocal command, even seal it, if I feel I’m in danger. I haven’t had to activate it, which is fortunate, and, frankly, I would use it only if truly necessary. The Guild would have to come and reset it on-site and that would be a little humiliating. There’s my vanity again.

I entered my two-room apartment and surveyed the mess. I sleep in the living room because I like using the bedroom as an office. An unmade, slept-in futon with a view of the kitchen can be depressing, but it’s mine. The clock on the counter blinked 11:14 A.M. Not even noon, and I had had to look at two dead bodies. That’s my surreal life in the Weird. For the start of the mundane part of my day, I made some desperately needed coffee.