Unquiet Dreams

Chapter 4

In spite of being amused by Stinkwort’s paranoia, I was getting uncomfortable standing in front of the building waiting for Murdock. Clearly, word had spread about our presence on the street. An assortment of people found time to stroll by with no apparent errand in mind. A few peered at us curiously, as if a stranger hanging out in front of an abandoned building was surprising in this part of town. To a certain extent, it probably was. Around that part of the neighborhood, strangers didn’t like to attract too much attention unless they were trying to send a message. I hoped ours said keep away until the cops show up.

Most people looked at us suspiciously, though. Joe’s marauding dwarves showed themselves down at the one corner. They numbered six now. One more, and they’d be a cliché.

Murdock’s voice mail had picked up when I called, and he hadn’t called back yet. He usually called me back right away, but it had been almost twenty minutes. I didn’t want to leave a message about the running shoe at the station house without talking to him, though. It was his case, and he should be on-site when a unit came to pick up the evidence.

Joe fidgeted about the stoop. “Do I have to stay? The windows across the street have eyes in them, and they’re not an even number.”

“Yes, we have to see if Murdock wants to arrest you.”

“What?” he shrieked. Several heads turned in an avid hope that some action was about to happen. We disappointed them.

“Just kidding, Joe. We do need to tell him what happened. It’s up to him what he wants to report.”

“Well, I wish he’d hurry up. I’m bored.”

I just nodded. I was used to Joe’s definition of interesting. It had no logic to it, so I gave up trying to understand it years ago. I have seen him stare at a patch of grass for hours with an avidity I couldn’t fathom. And yet, here we were in one of the more sketchy parts of the Weird with a veritable parade of fey folk slinking by, and he was bored.

I idly wondered if the Tangle were a taste of what Faerie was like, if the old country still existed. Few humans lived down this end of the neighborhood. Humans did live in Faerie, but none seemed to have come through the Convergence. The concentration of fey folk had to have been high in Faerie, by definition. With all that power, all that essence manipulation, it’s no surprise that legends portray the place as dangerous and precarious. Even in the short time we stood on the sidewalk, I could feel little spell pings tossed our way. I could no longer actively discern their exact nature, but having been in places like this before my accident, I could guess.

Some people were probably checking to see if we were glamoured, most likely me. Flits don’t lend themselves to glamouring. They’re too small to pretend to be something else. Occasionally, they might glamour themselves as small animals or even plants, but it was much easier for them so use their own essence to fade from sight if they were trying to blend into their surroundings. Besides, they don’t really like using essence outside themselves, which is what a glamour is—essence concentrated in something like a necklace or a stone or a ring that operates almost independently of the user.

Sometimes glamours are harmless, like enhancing one’s appearance. Everyone has something they wish they could change about themselves, and some people prefer glamours to a nip and tuck. Even that has its limits, though. More than a few people have gone home with a hot babe only to discover later they were with a woman in the geriatric league. Sometimes they are used for privacy, like when someone just wants to just go about their business without having to interact with people they know. Sometimes they’re meant to deceive, which I admit has come in handy with investigative work on occasion.

Ultimately, glamours are lies. They go to the crux of relationships. If you can’t trust what you’re seeing, then maybe you can’t trust that person at all. And that’s why I kept getting pinged. When you live in a dangerous neighborhood, you want to know who is who and how much to be on guard around them.

Beside me, Joe made a growling sound. A moment later, he threw a broadcast sending. We don’t have drugs!

I chuckled. Half of the people who went by were using sendings to ask us for drugs. Certain sciences call it telepathy, but conceptually sendings are different. You impress auditory thoughts on essence and direct them where you want them to go. That’s a fey ability up and down. You get used to the little whispers in your mind, unless, of course, you’re annoyed because you’re bored.

Joe flinched. “Ow! Did you feel that?”

“Yeah.”

“Idiots,” he muttered.

A short spasm in my head told me that someone had cast a spell nearby. Since my accident, some spells feel like a nail in my brain. I haven’t tracked the types that have the most effect to detect a pattern, but scrying definitely tops the list. Someone starts trying to predict the future, and it’s migraine hell. Whatever spell just went off wasn’t scrying, but the fact that Joe felt it as pain meant it was hard and crude in execution, the equivalent of someone blowing a whistle in your ear. It usually indicated someone who had little training or was in a big hurry.

I looked at my watch. A half hour had gone by since I called Murdock. He tended not to call me only when he was either in a meeting or on radio silence. Then and during the occasional private recreational activity. It was a little early in the day as far as the latter, even for him, and he still called me if he were not too, let’s say, intimately distracted. It annoys the hell out of his dates.

A waft of something acrid tickled my nose. “You smell that, Joe?”

“That burning smell? I thought it was just part of the natural aroma of the street.”

Others had picked up the scent. Heads turned, craning to look up at the buildings, consternation fixed on faces. I did it myself, but couldn’t see anything. The wind shifted, and the odor increased. A huge gust of wind came up, and a cloud of thick black smoke engulfed us from the doorway behind us. Tears burned in my eyes as I stumbled down the steps to the sidewalk. The wind shifted again, and I was able to see again. Joe popped into view directly in front of me. He must have winked out as soon as he sensed the smoke coming.

I wiped my eyes and turned around. Smoke spewed from the upper stories of the building. Along the cornice, I could see flames. “Dammit! Joe, the shoe! Get the shoe!”

He vanished, then reappeared immediately. “Okay, just to be clear this time, you want me to pick it up and bring it here, right?”

“Yes. Go! Go!”

I swore under my breath as he vanished again. It was the spell. Someone had been watching, someone who actually had a reason to watch us. Given the time delay, I’d go the minion route. Someone reported back to someone, and that someone ordered up a fire spell. I spun around to the street. In the gathering crowd, I could see the six dwarves that had lingered up the street. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been one I missed. Hell, they could have just used a cell phone.

I stalked across the street toward them. It’s a measure of how my face must have looked, because the small crowd parted as I came up on the curb. I went up to the first dwarf, the same one whom I had spoken to earlier, and poked him on the shoulder. “Who’d you call? Moke?”

At the mention of Moke, several onlookers moved farther back. A couple even turned heel and walked away. The dwarf looked down at his shoulder, then back at me. “Nobody.”

I poked him again. “Was it Moke?”

He grabbed my forearm with a hand like a vise grip, and my body shields activated. They’re not much good anymore, just enough to blunt the force of a blow, but I would still feel it. In my anger, I’d forgotten. You don’t poke a dwarf if you can’t follow through with a fight.

“I said nobody.” He flung me away from him, and I sprawled into the street. As I got to my feet, he moved toward me. Before he reached me, a blur of pink light flashed between us, and he stopped.

Joe hovered in front of the dwarf. In one hand, the charred remains of the Nike dangled. In the other, the sharp white flame of his sword pointed directly at the dwarf’s nose.

“Got a problem, shorty?” Joe asked. He grinned, a tough, cold line across his face. Joe has a repertoire of grins. This one was for sending chills down the spine, and it works like you wouldn’t believe. The dwarf didn’t move and didn’t take his eyes off the blade. To the casual observer, it doesn’t look like much, just a few inches of narrow white light with flickers of blue flame surrounding it. But anyone who has ever faced a flit with a blade knows better. It’s sharp as a thought and burns with essence.

“Let it go, Banjo. We’ve got company,” said one of the other dwarves.

Banjo shifted his gaze to Joe’s face, then mine. He stepped back. A siren cut through the sounds the burning building was making. I felt more than saw a car pull up behind us quickly and stop.

“We got better things to do,” Banjo said. He walked off, with his cadre of boys fast on his heels. Joe hovered after them a bit just to make sure they didn’t change their minds.

“Everything okay here?”

I turned to see Murdock leaning against his car. A collection of tough-looking elves and fairies wearing red and black leather posed on the other side of the car, an amusing visual effect he had no idea was going on. “Yeah, just a little arson and a smidge of street fighting.”

Murdock smiled and nodded up the street at Joe. “He’s better than a Doberman.”

I nodded, rubbing my shoulder. “Yeah, and more fun to drink with.”

A deep horn blast announced the arrival of a fire truck. Murdock looked up at the burning building. “I’m going to guess that has something to do with the evidence you mentioned.”

“Yeah. Did.”

Joe took that moment to return. He smiled—much more pleasantly—and handed me a smoldering lump of rubber and canvas. “I’m not bored anymore.”

I took the shoe by its laces and held it out to Murdock. “This is the kid’s. It had some elf blood on it, but it’s gone now obviously.”

Murdock leaned in his car window to retrieve an evidence bag. Murdock held the bag open, and I dropped in the shoe. He zipped the bag closed and held it up, waiting for the smoldering to die off for lack of air.

“Elf blood,” he said. He looked at me with a knowing smirk. “Why do I not like the implications of that?”

“Because you know I think it was Kruge’s, even though I couldn’t definitively sense it, and now I can’t prove it. And because you don’t like coincidences any more than I do, we’re going to have to figure out how the cases are connected without missing other evidence in case they’re not.”

He pursed his lips, nodding. “Yep.”

That’s why I like working with Murdock. No bickering without a good reason. Oh, sure, we disagree, sometimes a lot. We debate, though, not argue, and usually end up at a place we’re both comfortable with. Just like he knew where my thinking was heading, I knew he wasn’t going to discourage me until he thought the trail was dead cold.

“This is the first time I touched it,” Joe blurted.

Murdock looked at Joe, then me. “Oh?”

I shook my head in amused exasperation. “He sat in it.” I told Murdock what happened. No surprise, he shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter now. The bigger question is when you were spotted.”

Two cop cars appeared on either end of the block. Another fire truck pulled up, followed by an ambulance van. “Um, Murdock, shouldn’t you be doing something?”

He craned his neck over the roof of his car. “Yeah. Get in. If we don’t leave now, they’ll box us in.”

“Leave? Don’t you have to police something?”

He walked around his car and got in. “Homicide, Connor. Is there anyone in the building?”

I looked at Joe. “Nope,” said Joe.

“Then get in before my clothes start smelling like smoke.”

“I’m going to watch the fire,” said Joe.

“Suit yourself. Let me know about your gang contact,” I said. I don’t think he heard me, though. He was already drifting higher up for a better view. I tossed some juice bottles off the passenger seat and got in. Murdock backed all the way up the street to the corner and bounced the car around. He coasted over to Summer Street and made his way back toward downtown.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

“Doctor’s appointment. New healer.”

“What did he say?”

“He says what they all say. He can’t find anything wrong with me except my essence is suped-up. I told him I’m fine, it’s only the fey who seem to think I’m not.”

I nodded. “It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you, Murdock. Remember that kid, Shay? How I kept telling you he had an oddly strong essence for a human? He still felt like a human normal to me. You feel like a fey human, if there’s such a thing. You feel like what I bet a human from Faerie would feel like. It’s never been seen post-Convergence, and they don’t understand it.”

As he stopped for a red light, he gave me a sideways glance and smiled. “Sounds familiar.”

“Touché,” I said. At Avalon Memorial, they didn’t understand my condition either. “Who’s the doctor?”

He accelerated with the light change. “I don’t think he’s a doctor, actually. He said he was a medic. Do the fey have army medics?”

I laughed. “That’s his title. Midach. He must be old school. You should ask Gillen Yor his name. He’ll know.”

“Why so interested?”

“Beyond the obvious that I hope you’re okay, if he can figure out what’s going on with you, maybe he can figure out what’s going on with me. We sort of have opposite problems. The source might be the same.”

“I knew this would end up being about you,” he said.

I felt anger rise. “I said I hoped you’re okay, didn’t I? Don’t you think I feel enough guilt about it?”

As usual, Murdock put me right in my place. He laughed. “I’m joking, ya fool. I knew it would irritate you. It’s not your fault I have some freaky essence now, just like if you got shot on another case, it wouldn’t be my fault. Unless, of course, I shot you. By accident, I mean. Let it go, Connor. I’m fine.”

“Jerk,” I said. I slouched deeper in my seat. He was right, of course. But I had put a lot of people in danger on that case, especially him. I had involved him—a human normal—in a situation where ability was being manipulated on an enormous scale. It could have killed him. It almost did. I’m still not sure if it was ego or error. Either way, I didn’t like doubting myself. I’m not used to it. I didn’t say anything more. I know what it feels like to have something wrong that no one knows how to fix.

“Anyway, we ID’d the kid,” Murdock said. “Dennis Farnsworth. Sixteen years old. Some petty shoplifting charges. All dropped. No big trouble.”

I knew it. Sixteen. “Until now.”

“Until now,” Murdock repeated.

“Any family?”

He nodded. “Mother. Two sisters. They live on D Street.” He turned onto D Street.

My stomach gave a slight clench. I knew what was coming. “Have they been notified?”

“Yeah. We get the easy part. All we have to do is question her while she’s in shock.”

I hate talking to parents about their dead kids. You knock on a door. It opens. They take one look at you with your solemn face, and they know. They always know. You don’t even have to be wearing a uniform. They can smell cop a mile a way. Doesn’t matter what rung of the social ladder they’re on. They know a cop who has that look isn’t stopping by for the Auxiliary Association’s annual donation drive. The last thing they want to talk about is how maybe their kid was not hanging with the right crowd.

Sunset was coming on, the sky turning a deep purple. The streetlights hadn’t kicked on yet, but already house lights burned more visibly, the taillights of cars standing out a little more. You travel far enough down D Street, you get out of the Weird and into South Boston. If you don’t travel that far, you end up in the twilight zone between the two neighborhoods. Not dangerous with a capital “D,” but barely safe with a small “s.”

It was easy to spot where the Farnsworths lived. The triple-decker wooden townhouse shone with light. One lone news van from the local cable station had parked not too far away. I could lay odds I knew where the network stations were. Murdock parked by a fire hydrant.

We walked up the sidewalk to the house, nodded to the beat officer who was keeping an eye on things, and mounted the porch steps. Several kids stared at us, an unusual mix of fey and human, street kids, with hard stares and harder lives. No gang colors that I could see.

We went through the open door into the house, the heat of many people wafting over us. To the right, a staircase led to the upper apartments. The Farnsworth place was on the first floor, another open door that met the entryway on the landing.

Murdock stepped in first, pausing to take in the scene. Over his shoulder I could see people clustered in a modest living room. On the couch a red-eyed woman sat, stout, thin, dyed blond hair clipped to one side with a child’s red barrette. She had her arm wrapped around a small girl, who half lay in her lap, maybe seven years old, with solemn eyes roaming the room. Another young girl, a few years older, sat on her other side, her face pressed against her mother’s shoulders, eyes as red as the woman’s.

“Mrs. Farnsworth?” Murdock spoke softly.

The woman lifted her head in our direction without speaking.

“Mrs. Farnsworth, I’m Detective Leonard Murdock. I’m very sorry for your loss today.”

She didn’t so much nod as rock back and forth slightly. “Thank you.”

“Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Another woman crossed the room, sat on the couch, and with gentle hands took the younger child into her own lap. Mrs. Farnsworth squeezed her other daughter’s hand and stood. Without speaking, she led us through a crowded hallway lined with more people. Their conversations fell away as we passed, their faces tracking with questions.

We entered a back bedroom, obviously her room, crowded with a bedroom set too large for the space. Everything was neat and orderly, the faint odor of dime-store rose water in the air. She sat on the bed.

“Mrs. Farnsworth, when was the last time you spoke to Dennis?”

“Last night before I went to work. He was supposed to be watching his sisters. Molly said he went out about eleven o’clock and made her swear not to tell. He said he’d be back in an hour.”

“Did he seem different? Preoccupied? Worried?”

She shook her head. “He seemed fine. Happy. It was just a regular day.”

“Do you know if he was in any kind of trouble?” Murdock asked.

She shook her head again. “Not that I knew. He’s that age when it isn’t cool to confide in his mother.”

“What about his father?”

Her voice and face went flat. “Gone. Ten years.”

“What about friends? A lot of kids on the porch.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know his friends anymore. I work two jobs. Denny was quiet. He was trying to stay out of trouble.”

“Was it working?” I asked. Murdock shot me a look, but I ignored him.

“I don’t know,” she said in a tiny voice.

I crouched down so that she could look down at me. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Farnsworth, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Connor Grey. I’m helping to investigate any unique aspects to this…situation. Do you know why Dennis was on Summer Street?”

She shrugged. “He hung around up the Weird. Found some group that he liked.”

“A gang?”

Finally, she stirred out of her lethargy. “He is not in a gang! Denny hated gangs. That’s how he got in trouble—some gang trying to recruit him. His high school counselor got him involved in a community group.”

I liked and didn’t like where this was going. “Unity?”

She nodded. “That’s it. He seemed to like it there. His grades went up.”

“Did Dennis know Alvud Kruge?”

Her eyes searched the carpet. “He talked about Mr. K. all the time. He liked him.”

“Do you know what happened to Alvud Kruge today?”

She closed her eyes. “Yes. My son couldn’t have done something like that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that.”

“Mrs. Farnsworth, did Dennis confide in anyone?” Murdock asked.

Her face hardened a bit as she looked at him. “He had a girlfriend. Crystal. Crystal Finch.”

“Do you have an address or phone number?”

“No. Somewhere on E Street. He ended the relationship.”

“Why’s that?” Murdock asked.

“Because I asked him to. That girl was bad news. Bad family. Trouble.”

“Is there anyone you can think of that might have wanted to cause Dennis harm?”

She exhaled sharply through her nose. “Look where we live. I work two jobs, and this is the best I can do. No one needs a reason to harm you around here. And I can’t think of a single reason why someone would…why someone would…” She teared up. “No, I don’t know.” The tears began to spill.

“Mrs. Farnsworth…” Murdock began.

She bunched a tissue under her nose. “I want my girls. Please, get my girls. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

Murdock pulled a business card out of his pocket. “Okay. Here, please call me if you think of anything. I’ll call on you tomorrow to see if you need anything.”

She took the card wordlessly, not looking at it. I stood and backed out of the room with Murdock. He turned back a moment. “If I may ask one more question, Mrs. Farnsworth, did Denny have a pair of orange Nikes?”

She shook her head. “No. He had white sneakers. I don’t know what kind.”

“Thank you,” Murdock said. We made our way back through the apartment. Murdock paused by the couch and squatted in front of the older girl. “Are you Molly?” She nodded.

“Did Denny say where he was going last night?”

She stared at Murdock with wide, solemn eyes. “No. He said he had something important to do.”

“Did he say what?”

Molly glanced at the woman cradling her sister. She leaned close to Murdock. “No, but he went with Crystal,” she whispered. “I saw her up the street. Don’t tell Mum or she’ll be mad.”

Murdock smiled to reassure her. “I won’t. Your mum’s asking for you and your sister.”

We left the apartment. The porch was decidedly emptier than when we had arrived. The fey kids were gone. Of the ones left, Murdock started asking about their relationship to Dennis. I stepped down to the sidewalk. He was just covering the bases. I was willing to bet that the kids who really knew Denny Farnsworth had left when they saw us. Tough kids don’t talk to cops if they can avoid it.

I wandered back to Murdock’s car. As I leaned against the fender, I noticed a woman a couple of houses down. If the height of her skirt were any indication, she had not taken into account the coming night chill. And if the flash of her sequin top was any indication, she had wandered into the wrong end of the neighborhood. She wasn’t watching the street, though. She watched the Farnsworth house, craning her neck every time a girl stepped onto the porch. Just the girls. A gut-level intuition kicked in.

I strolled over. As I got closer, I could see the heavy makeup, the overdyed hair. She had that look that said early thirties, trying to cover up enough wear and tear for someone in her forties desperately hoping she looked in her twenties. It probably worked later in the evening.

Without looking at me, she said, “Not now, hon. I got business.”

“Mrs. Finch?” I said.

Her head whipped around fast on that. She eyed me up and down, then turned back to watch the house. “Not hardly.”

“Looking for Crystal?”

She bit her lower lip and looked at me sideways. “You know where she’s at?”

“That answers my next question. She’s not here, Mrs. Finch. I got the feeling inside she wouldn’t be welcome.”

She flipped her hair and stared directly at me know. Cool, hard eyes, not the type I would find comforting if I were looking for a little short-term company. “Ain’t no Mrs. Finch. That was Crystal’s daddy’s name. You a cop?”

“Not really. But I’d still like to talk to Crystal.”

“Oh, you’d ‘like to talk to Crystal,’” she mimicked. “Get in line, buddy. I haven’t seen her in three days. When I heard about Denny, I thought I might get her here.”

I glanced up at the house. Murdock had made his way onto the steps and was talking to the last couple of kids remaining. “You don’t seem very upset.”

She shrugged. “Not my kid. Shit happens.”

“What can you tell me about Crystal?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Crystal? How about she’s an ungrateful little bitch who owes me seventy-five bucks, and if she don’t turn up real soon, she can just stay wherever she’s landed. How’s that?”

“Very maternal,” I said.

She curled her upper lip. “Go to hell, Mr. Not-really-a-cop. You see Crystal, you tell her I want my cash.” She walked away, her high heels boring holes into the sidewalk. I watched her go and thought you don’t have to be fey to land on the wrong side of the street around here.

I went back to Murdock’s car to wait for him. Night descended on the city, a darker night than usual. Death may be the great equalizer, but the Weird is a close second. That two people died there, one so prominent, the other so not, demonstrates it. The fact that they had a connection to each other shows how the high and low can both find the same knock on the door.